Innovating recruiting through online gaming
May 1, 2020 Prior to Solve, McKinsey’s assessment game, we administered an in-person pen-and-paper multiple-choice test. We, however, wanted to improve the candidate experience and allow candidates to better showcase their skills and strengths.
In 2016, McKinsey began collaborating with the start-up Imbellus,a company that brought together psychometricians, data scientists, and engineers aspiring to replace traditional education standardized tests. Together with McKinsey’s Recruiting and People Analytics teams, we created an innovative digital experience that set tasks, rather than posing traditional questions for candidates to answer. Observing how people approach these tasks gives a picture of how people approach problems more broadly. We hoped to find great problem solvers and to attract talented people who typically might not be interested, seek us out or start our recruiting process.
In building the game we wanted to create a test that would be interesting to people of all backgrounds. This meant stepping beyond our traditional business cases and designing something different. We landed on a natural environment for the game, centered on wildlife and habitats, not board rooms, offices or manufacturing facilities. In addition, we wanted the game to need no prep, nothing to review in advance, no guides to buy, no studying beforehand. Currently, applicants are offered one to three tasks from our library of tasks set under water, on mountain tops and in prairies.
