The world’s first recruitment gamification system that takes care of recruiters’ emotional state was created by the Tech company CleverStaff

In the summer of 2022, an international IT company, CleverStaff, which specializes in creating software for automating recruitment, introduced the concept of gamification the hiring process. It is designed to improve the user experience by engaging in the same job. The unique Applicant Tracking System (ATS) is already available in Poland.

The ultimate recruiter’s goal is to hire people and fill vacancies that requires a considerable amount of operational activities. When the candidate accepts the offer and starts working, it’s like a reward for the giant piece of work done. The rest of the interaction with candidates is emotionally complex and routine — it’s demotivating.

CleverStaff was the first company among software providers for recruiters to offer a gamification solution to enhance the recruiter’s user experience, lessen procrastination, and lower the danger of burnout. 

“For eight years, we have been improving the system’s functionality and providing recruiters with a greater variety of resources. The whole recruitment software business does this, which is great. However, the issue is that effectiveness drops over time. Once the most popular features have been implemented, streamlining recruitment by at least 10% is a challenging task that will most likely require years of hard intellectual work. We decided to engage in the emotional element of the job, which is a unique, complex, and promising move for the enterprise software,” says CleverStaff founder Volodymyr Barkhat.

The innovative software solution is intended to recognize and visualize the recruiters’ accomplishments that are frequently unseen since it is difficult to tally them. Now, recruiters earn rewards for filling vacancies and get prizes for smaller “anniversary” accomplishments. Rewards are the supposedly internal “money” (precious stones meaning different levels). They are awarded for various achievements in work, such as delivering tests to candidates and organizing interviews. The results are summed up objectively: for example, the efforts for processing simple, medium, and complex vacancies differ, which is why users are rewarded with a different number of prizes. Those who enjoy competition can also participate in recruiters’ prize contests. New professional levels up to God/Goddess of Hunting are assigned as experience levels rise. That’s right, in CleverStaff, awards are given by the ancient goddess Artemis, the modern patroness of recruitment.

The system encourages to actively add candidates, create vacancies, write comments, letters, and offers, organize interviews, etc. Everything in it is targeted at work-related tasks. A compelling narrative and effective imagery are also important. In addition, based on feedback from CleverStaff users, the creators discovered that using gamification improved recruiters’ performance by up to 18.6%*. At the same time, we were not talking about an additional workload; rather, we were just discussing altering the way in which one views the work, particularly the routine aspects.

According to Volodymyr, a proponent of gamification:

“When work is regarded as routine, it appears boring and pointless. We don’t make the routine clearer or better. Our perspective on and attitude toward work are changing. Routine is out of the question if the work is intriguing, thrilling, or attractive.”

CleverStaff developers say that gamification and automation work together to provide a double effect. The company spent two years researching how much time is saved with automated recruitment, i.e. using an ATS. And they came to the conclusion that the savings are up to 20% working hours (equal to 10 weeks or 2.4 months per year), and when combined with gamification, the recruitment efficiency jumps to 42%. This means that a team of recruiters can virtually double the hiring process! 

CleverStaff launches operations in Poland and invites Polish recruiters, recruitment agencies, and businesses to try the revolutionary ATS.

* Based on the findings of a beta test of seven firms 30 days before and 30 days after the gamification was introduced.