Connecting gaming skills to job skills

The research of Randstad proved that gamers that played certain games also had certain skills. However, for a job you’re not looking for people who have ‘good wave management’ or ‘good spray pattern control’. We needed a common ground for all skills, whether attained through gaming or through studying.

The ESCO system - European Skills, Competences, Qualifications and Occupations - was our saving grace. This objective system gave us the possibility to match gaming skills and job skills to the same logic, which also gave us a way to prove how useful gaming can be.

Job selection

The skills that gamers have are mainly soft skills, like strategic decision making, communication skills, leadership skills and mental endurance, but also some hard skills like reaction speed. We also noticed skills like computer literacy, a growth mindset and stress resistance. Our conclusion was that most gamers are good at high pressure situations where clear communications are key and they get to challenge themselves.

One of the jobs fitting this profile is working in a customer service center, specifically as the second line technician. The one who actually solves the issue together with the customer. Patience, an understanding of tech, communication skills, a willingness to help and to develop yourself all matter in this context. And the one company willing to try this out was KPN. This meant that we had our testing grounds.

Approaching gamers

Something as new as this might not go over well with gamers. We are effectively invading their sacred gamespace with our ‘ads’. Which is why we took a community focused approach: we spoke to community leaders and influencers and explained that we want to help gamers in a creative way and who knows, maybe someone from their community would have a job that really fits them.

In the end we had enough communities participating to reach around 10k people through Discord. We created content where we showed the communities in-game scenarios and asked them how they would respond. After we got their answers, we showed them how the right answer also corresponds to the job of customer support. This creative solution showed the gamers how their gaming experience might actually help them find a job!

Results

In the end we found out that people like the idea of matching a job with gaming skills, but not so much this specific job. We reached a few thousand people, got around twenty applications and only a few of those people got hired. The most important feedback we got was not ‘never do this again’, but ‘please find more jobs to match the gaming skills with’. The idea was popular, but probably better fitting for specialist jobs than entry jobs.