Your Next Job Interview Could Be Playing a Weird Smartphone Game

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Candidates hoping to land their dream job are increasingly being asked to play video games, with companies like Siemens, E.ON and Walmart filtering out hundreds of applicants before the interview stage based partly on how they perform.Played on either smartphones or computers, the games’designers say they can help improve workplace diversity, but there are questions over how informative the results really are.

为了在面试之前淘汰数百名申请者，西门子、意昂集团和沃尔玛等公司将“玩电子游戏”纳入了测试——想得到理想工作的求职者需要先玩游戏，游戏表现将在一定程度上决定其能否获得面试机会。这种做法现在越来越流行。游戏可以在智能手机或电脑上玩，游戏设计人员称这些游戏有助提高职场多样性，但有人质疑这样的测试结果究竟能反映多少信息。

[2]To the casual observer, many of the games might seem almost nonsensical.One series of tests by UK-based software house Arctic Shores includes a trial where the player must tap a button frantically to infl ate balloons for a party without bursting them.In another, the candidate taps a logo matching the one displayed on screen, at an ever more blistering pace.

[2]乍看之下，许多游戏似乎毫无意义。在一款由英国软件公司北极海岸开发的某系列测试游戏中，玩家必须狂点按钮，给聚会用的气球充气，同时还不能让它们爆炸。在另一款游戏里，玩家需要以超快的速度点击与屏幕所显示标识相匹配的那个标识。

[3]Afterwards, a personality profile is built using data on how someone performed, says Robert Newry at Arctic Shores.They claim the traits that can be measured include a person’s willingness to deliberate, seek novel approaches to tasks and even their tendency for social dominance.“What we are measuring is not your reaction skills, your dexterity,”says Newry.“It’s the way you go about approaching and solving the challenge that is put in front of you.”

[3]北极海岸的罗伯特·纽里表示，游戏过后，会根据求职者游戏过程中的数据分析出其性格特征。他们声称，可测特质包括一个人是否愿意仔细思考、寻找解决任务的新方法，甚至是否倾向在社会中取得主导地位。“我们所测的不是反应技能或者灵巧度，”纽里说道，“而是如何处理和解决摆在面前的问题。”

[4]Using the games, Siemens UK doubled the proportion of female candidates that made it past the initial stages of graduate recruitment than in the previous year, according to data released by Arctic Shores.Another company that makes such tests, Pymetrics, says its assessments have boosted recruitment of under-represented groups, with one financial services firm increasing the number of minority candidates offered technical roles by 20 per cent.However,it’s not clear if the boost could simply be down to an increased focus on or awareness of diversity in the workplace.

[4]北极海岸最近公布的数据显示，借助游戏的方式，西门子英国公司毕业生招聘初选阶段通过的女性候选人比例较前一年翻了一番。另一个制作此类测试游戏的公司Pymetrics表示，评估改善了少数群体的录用情况——在某金融服务公司，获得技术岗位的少数族裔人数增加了20%。然而，这种数量提升是否可以简单归因于对职场多样性关注度的上升，结果尚不明确。

[5]The games are meant to offer a form of psychometric testing and are based on techniques developed for measuring personality traits.But whereas in academic research the tests are generally calibrated the same way for all participants, when used for recruitment they are often tweaked depending on how existing employees at a company play them.

[5]游戏基于为衡量性格特征而开发出的技术，目的是提供一种心理测试。但是，在学术调查中，测试对所有参与者的衡量标准通常都相同，而用于招聘时，测试标准常常会参照已就职员工的游戏表现加以调整。

[6]“We go into these companies and say, ‘Your individuals may be different.Let’s use your high performers to put together a data set,’” says Frida Polli, co-founder of Pymetrics.In other words, if your gameplay matches that of someone already at the firm, you’re more likely to advance to the next stage of recruitment.“You can develop a game-based assessment as rigorous as any traditional psychometric assessment,” says Richard Landers at Old Dominion University in Virginia.“But I don’t know how many companies actually succeed at that.” This is because it takes time and money to show that any assessment’s measurement of a given trait is statistically reliable.

[6]Pymetrics 公司的共同创始人弗里达·波利表示：“我们走进这些公司说：‘你们的员工可能各不相同。让业绩突出的人来玩游戏，再将测试结果形成一组数据。’”换句话说，如果求职者的游戏结果与已经入职者的结果匹配，那么他更可能胜出进入招聘的下一阶段。“你可以作出基于游戏的评估，跟任何传统心理测试的评估一样精准，”弗吉尼亚州欧道明大学的理查德·兰德斯说，“但我不知道有多少家公司真正成功了。”这是因为，要想证明评估中给定特征的每项测量数据都可靠，需要时间和财力。

[7]Landers performed an independent review of game-like intelligence tests by Australia-based firm Revelian and says the results were reliable.Arctic Shores have also ran a study with around 300 participants to validate their games.

[7]兰德斯对澳大利亚Revelian公司推出的游戏类智力测试进行了独立研究，表示该测试结果值得信赖。北极海岸也对大约300名参与者进行了研究，以证实此类游戏测试的可行性。

[8]Caryn Lerman at the University of Pennsylvania has studied brain-training apps and says that although people’s improved performance at these can be tracked over time, they generally have no observable impact on cognitive ability in the real world.She is sceptical that playing the games well corresponds to ability to do a good day’s work in the office.

[8]宾夕法尼亚大学的卡里恩·莱尔曼研究训练大脑的软件后表示，尽管人们成绩的进步能够不断被记录下来，但在真实世界中，这些软件并不会对其认知能力产生实际影响。她怀疑游戏玩得好是否代表在办公室日常工作就能干得好。

[9]Although the game-based tests are mandatory, a company’s decision to interview someone may be based on other factors as well, such as their academic record.But in trying to find new ways of shortlisting the best of the bunch,companies risk alienating unsuccessful candidates, says Margaret Beier at Rice University in Texas.They might even expose themselves to lawsuits.“Ifiapply for a job, play games that seem totally unrelated to it and then don’t get that job, I might have a lot of questions about that assessment,” she says.

[9]尽管必须进行基于游戏的测试，但公司决定面试某人可能还会考虑其他因素，比如学习成绩。不过，得克萨斯州莱斯大学的玛格丽特·贝耶尔表示，在尝试寻找新途径挑选优秀人才的过程中，公司会面临求职者失败后产生敌视心理的风险，甚至可能惹上官司。她说：“如果我申请一份工作，玩的游戏似乎与工作岗位毫无关系，最后我没有得到那份工作，那我可能会对那种评估产生很大质疑。”