The dream of every corporate recruiting leader is to discover a phenomenal secret source that few in recruiting are even aware of. That recruiting source would ideally be a social media community, so its members would be “social savvy.”
The new source would include millions of potential recruits, who are highly talented individuals who love technology. Members would ideally be highly competitive individuals, who can operate independently but also as team players. The source would, of course, be global and primarily digital. And it would provide features that recruiters can take advantage of including chat, user-originated content, online forums, live streaming video, and virtual and in-person events. And it would be even better if the community included ranked public lists of the most talented individuals in the community.
If you haven’t heard of it, the name of this community is “eSports” (short for electronic sports). And its focus is on playing in and watching electronic video game competitions. Now if you might be thinking that video games are insignificant, realize that more money will be spent on video games this year ($92 billion) than on music and movies combined (Stat trackers IHS). The latest estimate is that 71.5 million people watched competitive gaming in a single year. Participation in this community can be financially rewarding because the winning five-person team at a recent Dota 2 International Championship won a $6 million first prize.
If you grew up playing video games alone in your room on a console, realize that video gaming is now social and radically different. Game developers have recently added observing capabilities that allow non-players to watch as spectators. There are online competitions for individuals and teams, the largest competitions are televised on major networks or video stream, and lately arena-filling extravaganza competitions have become popular.
The reasons that this community is “target rich” for recruiters include:
Begin by verifying my contention that this is an ideal recruiting opportunity by making a list of the elements of any social media community that makes it perfect for recruiting. Next survey some of your best technical employees and geeks to see if they are already active in this eSports community.
Start your recruiting effort by slowly encouraging your already involved employees to identify and make employee referrals. Also, put together an advisory group of your eSports employees and use them to identify the best avenues in the community for employer brand advertising, job postings, native advertising, and physical events where sending recruiters make sense.
Consider holding a LAN gaming event on your site and recruiting during the event. And finally to ensure that eSports remains a quality source, put together metrics covering the quality of candidates and the quality of hires (on-the-job performance and retention rates) that come from eSports sources. And then over time use these results/metrics to continually improve your results.
Because many of eSports competitions involve teams, great recruiting is essential in order to maintain a winning video game team. As a result, you will find that team managers in the community also excel at recruiting. Some teams hold tryouts or tournaments in order to identify talent, while the larger teams have talent scouts and their own “farm teams” (i.e. academies) for developing talent. The best recruits obviously need strong game playing skills but they also must have a great deal of stamina and the ability to innovate and rapidly learn new approaches to winning.
Once you look at all the factors that make this eSports community a great recruiting source, you may want to act quickly to get in early before the recruiting competition increases. You will find that recruiting in this community is fun, as well as rewarding. This means that it will eventually become a “go-to” source for your recruiters and for referrals.
