Ideally, the process of figuring out whether your skills match a job’s requirements should feel like a great conversation—informative, engaging, and even fun. At its best, both parties bring something to the exchange, so person-job fit can be seen in light of the organization’s needs as well as the person’s interests and values. All too often, recruiting falls far short of this ideal. Many organizations rely on job postings that consist of little more than bulleted task lists and minimum qualifications. When that happens, job applicants lack the real-life, contextualized information needed to fully understand how a job is performed—let alone to determine whether that job is actually a good fit for their interests, values, and skills.
To reach its full potential, a VJP also must help potential applicants assess whether their interests and values are a good match with the job.
HumRRO’s Virtual Job Previews (VJPs) address these challenges by creating a truly innovative recruitment tool that reflects two key foundations: rich media interactive technology and the reliable and valid assessment of vocational interests and values. The synergy created by these capabilities transforms the recruitment process into an interactive, educational, and truly rewarding experience for both organizations and job seekers.
Engaging Simulations
Organizations that have made thoughtful attempts to share job information with prospective applicants tend to rely on Realistic Job Previews (RJPs). Through brochures, videos, presentations, or interviews, RJPs describe the positive and negative aspects of the target job, often focusing specifically on things that applicants may not know or have unrealistic expectations about.
Because RJPs involve sharing a great deal of information with potential applicants, it is critical for organizations to ask:
How can we make the recruiting process as engaging as possible?
HumRRO’s VJPs go beyond traditional RJPs and allow users to explore jobs from the inside out. Through rich media animation and interactive questions, VJPs:
- Immerse people in a “day in the life” simulation, allowing them to experience work challenges through the eyes of an incumbent.
- Engage job seekers by having them directly explore what is done on the job, why it is done, and the job’s impact.
- Ask questions that allow individuals to receive feedback about whether they are a good fit with the job’s demands.
One project where we implemented this approach was conducted for the International Association of Chiefs of Police (IACP), and it addressed the unique recruiting challenges faced by police departments nationwide. By counteracting inaccurate stereotypes and highlighting little-known aspects of policing, the VJP can help stem the flow of recruits who quit because they don’t understand what police work really involves. Yet even when job information is conveyed in a clear and engaging way, potential applicants often do not have a structured way to assess their interest in and alignment with the job. A second key question therefore becomes: How can the recruiting process become as interactive and informative as possible?
Person-Job Fit
Conveying job requirements through an engaging and realistic rich media simulation is just one part of a truly effective recruitment process. To reach its full potential, a VJP also must help potential applicants assess whether their interests and values are a good match with the job. HumRRO has been helping job seekers evaluate this type of fit for decades, for example:
- We created tools such as the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) Work Importance Profiler to help individuals find meaningful careers.
- We developed an engaging and interactive online career exploration system that spans over 600 occupations across 370 Federal agencies.
A key strength of our VJPs is that they allow person-job fit to be assessed in a truly contextualized way. For example, the policing VJP we developed consists of a variety of situations commonly faced by police officers. Each scenario allows individuals to experience the types of interpersonal and emotional skills demanded by police work, and they are prompted to think about their own interests in light of those demands through questions embedded within each scenario.
Person-job fit is a complex, multi-faceted concept, and our VJPs assess it from different perspectives:
Along with being engaging and informative, our VJPs are flexible and easy to administer. Users can complete a VJP and receive real-time feedback via desktop computers, smartphones, and tablets, and clients can host a VJP on their platforms or have us administer it for them.
Do potential applicants engaged in your recruitment process feel like they are having a great conversation? Do they really understand what makes the target job unique, and whether their interests and skills are a good match? If not, contact HumRRO to explore how a VJP can help transform your recruitment process into something that is truly engaging, interactive, and informative.
