Leadership potential – we all know the saying, “work smarter, not harder” right? Well, that idea has finally made its way to the recruiting world in the form of gamified online recruiting platforms. These solutions offer a kind of one-stop-shop for the mid-career job seeker looking to demonstrate their abilities while finding their ideal employer and position.
We’ve talked before about the concept of “show, don’t tell” when it comes to resume writing. Well, today we’re going to pivot a bit and talk about how to apply that idea to your job hunt before ever meeting with a recruiter. Your resume will come into play, never fear, so it’s absolutely worth investing time and effort into polishing that up (we’ll give some tips shortly), however, there’s more to it.
Recruiters in today’s job market are looking at more than just work history and recommendations. They want to know what hard skills you possess as well as how well you’re going to fit in with the company culture. These gamified platforms are stepping into the breach and providing a way not only for you to put your best foot forward but also for recruiters to obtain a complete picture of you as a potential applicant.
Start With A Shiny New Resume
The resume isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. There is still no better way to show recruiters where you’re coming from and what you bring to the table. So if you’re starting a job search, it would behoove you to spend some time building a modern, up-to-date resume to use as a template.
Yes, template. With all those changes to the world of recruiting has come the dreaded ATS (applicant tracking system) automated resume scan. If you want to ensure your application is seen by a human, it has to match enough keywords and phrases to get past the scanner first. And that means you’ll want to take 5 minutes before applying to update your template to reflect back enough keywords to make it to round 2.
Some quick-and-dirty resume tips:
- Length: It’s fine to go onto two pages if you have enough experience that’s relevant to the position you’re applying for. If you’re changing paths mid-career then it’s best to keep it to one page and really highlight your skills and results over specific job experience.
- Content: Consider a hybrid style resume instead of the old standby chronological one. In a hybrid resume, you put a section at the top for Skills, and one for Results, followed by shortened experience and education sections.
- Layout: Keep the design simple and clean. This aids in readability for both the automated scanner as well as the first human to get their hands on your resume.
Challenges, Academies, and Badges, Oh My!
There will, of course, be variation among platforms. We’re going to use our own here at jobful as an example to go over some of the ways gamified recruiting allows you to demonstrate your best aspects and how that can help you land your dream job for your ideal employer.
Challenges are posted by the employers themselves
Think of challenges as a quizlet for the new millennium. These assessments are posted directly to the platform by recruiters for some of the biggest employers across industries. They should only take 5-10 minutes at most, and the results go directly to the recruiter who posted it (you’re asked before this happens, just in case you didn’t do so well and want a chance to retake the challenge).
Challenges can test for both hard and soft skills. Hard skills assessments are pretty straightforward, you’re asked industry-standard questions in the form of a game to see where your skill level is at. Programming languages, business software, and common cloud services all fit into this category. Soft skills, on the other hand, are most commonly tested with office simulations and “choose your own adventure” style text games. Team leadership, emotional intelligence, and interview skills are all fair game.
Academies help you learn the skills you may be lacking to maximize your leadership potential
Taking the game one step further brings us to academies. Similar in construction to bootcamps and other MOOCs (Massive Open Online Course), our academies will teach you the skills you find you’re lacking for that perfect position. Business software, emotional intelligence, and many more topics are covered in courses that range in duration from a couple of hours to several weeks (they’re self-directed). Like with challenges, the results can be sent directly to recruiters from companies you’re watching.
Badges, FTW!
When you complete a task on Jobful, anything from completing your profile to successfully mastering a new skill via an academy, you get a badge added to your profile, to show off your leadership potential. This way, recruiters from companies you may have never thought about applying to can also get a snapshot of the skills and talents you bring to the table. This way, while the recruiters who posted the challenge you just aced can reach out, so can recruiters with similar openings you may be excited to hear about. Badges are the ultimate expression of the “show, don’t tell” mantra.
Bringing it Full Circle: Gamified Recruiting Platforms Let You Demonstrate Your Skills
The overall goal of systems like those described above is to enable you to present a complete picture of who you, as the mid-career candidate, are and what skills you bring with you. It’s in combining your standard resume items with gamified assessment results and academy scores that a gamified recruiting platform can provide the snapshot a recruiter needs in order to reach out and begin the application process.
Nurture your leadership potential. Whether you’re feeling stuck in your current role, or are looking to make a mid-career jump into a whole new line of work, look to these platforms to provide the training you need and the platform to display your best self to the recruiters you want to be talking to.
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