Exploring a virtual world as an avatar used to be the preserve of gamers, but now the technology has become a new and fun way for students to find a career.
Without the face-to-face access provided by traditional recruitment fairs, students may have feared that applying for jobs would become a series of video interviews on the back of emailed CVs. Fortunately, earlier this year, PwC anticipated things were going to be very different when it started its graduate recruitment programme again in the autumn.
With the safety and wellbeing of staff and students paramount, PwC realised that virtual worlds could provide an alternative to the traditional recruitment fair tour of schools, colleges and universities, where students can talk to people manning a stall to find out more about the company.
“With no face-to-face access, we foresaw virtual worlds as a really engaging way to reach out to students from the UK and abroad,” says Jeremy Dalton, head of VR/AR at PwC.
“The students I’ve met have all been really positive about us innovating a new way of reaching out to them, rather than just falling back solely on video conferencing. The feedback has been that it’s a really cool experience and they enjoy being free to roam around and listen to presentations as well as check out the stalls and have one-to-one conversations with staff members.”
Exploring the park
The Virtual Park allows students to sign up to find out more about the firm through regular careers events online. Any student aged over 16 can log on to the PwC Virtual Park website and download the required software. They then add a profile and build the avatar that will represent them as they “walk” around the Virtual Park.
There are several locations to explore. The Expo Hall, for example, which is staffed by PwC employees who appear as avatars. Here, students can find out about the different lines of service the company offers and talk to real employees about their experiences. Potential recruits can find out more about the company’s culture and values as well as attend skill sessions and hear from senior members of staff, appearing as avatars, as they talk about their career progression with the firm.
Respecting your privacy
To avoid confusion and to aid privacy, people can talk to one another in a group but they can also step into a designated area of the park marked out by a blue circle on the ground, where they can have a one-to-one conversation about their career with a recruiter without being overheard or distracted by other conversations in the background. Dalton’s early experience is that the system works like real life rather than a conference call where there can be too many voices.
“While people can sometimes end up talking over each other on a video call, virtual reality is different,” he says.
“Because of the 3D environment of the Virtual Park and the ability to roam freely within it, it more closely represents a real-life situation with intuitive and familiar visual cues for when to speak. You can see which groups are engaged in conversation, walk up to individuals to strike up a conversation, and move away from crowds to avoid any background chatter.”
Boosting diversity
PwC’s talent engagement leader Cathy Baxter believes that the Virtual Park will provide more than just an engaging way for its staff ambassadors to meet prospective employees. It will also widen the audience the business can reach and therefore has more potential to boost diversity and inclusion. The traditional recruitment season runs from October to April and there are only so many physical UK-wide venues a team can attend. However, in the virtual world, the business is hoping to widen its reach and meet students who would not otherwise have attended a physical event.
“The Virtual Park is an innovative way for us to reach any student from any school, college or university in the UK, and overseas,” Baxter says.
“It’s a way to make ourselves available to people from all backgrounds that we might not have been able to meet in person. We’re going to be doing all we can to encourage diversity with special virtual events including Women in Business and Black Talent in Business.”
Blended future for recruitment
Although the initial stages are unusual this year for being fully virtual, the next steps for those applying for a job are as normal, an online games-based assessment and then a video interview. Those passing that stage would usually attend an assessment centre for an in-person Career Focused Day. This year, though, virtual Career Focused Days will be used to decide the candidates who are the best fit.
This year’s move to virtual attraction and engagement, and the greater reach it can offer, begs the question whether the new technology will be kept as part of the process, once the global pandemic is over.
“I think the pandemic has prompted us to accelerate the pace of something we were already working on,” says Baxter. “We were already moving to a more tech-enabled process, including virtual engagement. It’s a case of watching this space, but I suspect we could well move towards more of a blend of reaching out to students virtually as well as face-to-face in the future.”
The Virtual Park will be in place for the entire recruitment season. While the firm will have much to explore as it uses virtual reality to reach candidates for the first time, Baxter says she has a great deal of trust in remote technology.
PwC has recently taken on board a group of recruits who have started their working lives without stepping into an office – ongoing support is available for people working virtually, with a number of health and wellbeing initiatives and access to 24-hour help if they need it. Their successful integration has already shown that technology can bridge the gap between remote working and team building.
