James Coddington feels there's a better way to employ and train staff. Photo/Supplied.
James Coddington feels there's a better way to employ and train staff. Photo/Supplied.
The hunt for staff often takes a familiar path: an ad placed online is quickly followed by an avalanche of CVs, many of which are wholly unsuitable for the role.
But this could come to an end if a Kiwi company Joy Business Academy has its way.
The organisation, founded by James Coddington, has developed an innovative assessment tool that makes the hiring process more interactive and allows the employer to separate good applicants from those less suitable for a role.
The tool, which was launched last week in partnership with the Ministry of Social Development and Trade Me, gamifies online job hunting and allows employers to benchmark jobseekers along a number of pre-determined skills and personality attributes.
The tool delivers a series of online mini-games to potential candidates which test skills that a company determines to be critical to the role for which they are hiring.
Employers can choose from a list of 12 core assessments, based on the World Economic Forum's employability skills required for jobs in 2020, including adaptability, attention to detail, critical reasoning, problem-solving and time management.
Once the applicants complete their assessments, the scores are sent to the employer, who is then in a better position to prepare interview questions.
"The results allow employers to dive much deeper into a candidate's core attributes and therefore suitability for a job than by simply scanning information provided in a CV," Coddington says.
"Personality and skills are given priority over a simple focus on IQ or experience."
The initiative was launched last week by Employment Minister Willie Jackson, who spoke about how the tool gives users a more diverse range of information on potential employees.
"This Skills Assessment provides an alternative to CVs which is the current norm, and prioritises personality and skills over IQ or experience," Jackson said.
"These results allow employers to dive much deeper into a candidate's core attributes so that they can make good recruitment choices."
The way we find and hire staff could look quite different in the future. Photo/Getty Images.
This is the latest step in the continued evolution of the Joy Business Academy, which was founded by Coddington in 2015 to focus on the issue of vocational training.
In addition to the recruitment assessment tool, the Joy Business Academy has also launched a series called Construction Tycoon, which simulates the real world experience of building a business from the ground up.
The idea behind this is to give schoolchildren and adult learners the practical skills necessary to meet the demands of working in the tech and hospitality spaces.
Coddington says this idea was largely a response to the need to train people faster and more cost-effectively than the options currently available. This is particularly important, he says, when it comes to employees who are currently working full-time.
His company is also set to launch a financial literacy game in October 2019, with cryptocurrency among the many topics that will be addressed.
The innovative approach employed by the Joy Business Academy has already caught the attention of a number of major corporates, including BNZ, Mainfreight and Xero, which has, in turn, allowed the company to grow to 54 staff, employed across five countries.
