Recruitment can be a chore for many area companies. For Mitre Corp., it’s a game.
The company, which has dual headquarters in McLean and Bedford, Mass., recently developed a video game that it is using to draw younger talent to the company.
“Mitre is an older, more stable company; we’re almost 50 years old, and our work force is equally getting along in years,” said Gary Cluff, corporate recruiting manager for Mitre. “We needed to reach out and touch the Gen X-ers and Gen Y-ers in the labor force.”
Mitre’s game takes users on a tour of its Bedford campus (the second version will feature the McLean headquarters). It also conducts an interview with a virtual character, or avatar, and features mini-games, such as shooting papers into a trash can. The game’s conclusion has the participant working on the problem of pilots having trouble with flying an unmanned aerial vehicle, and the user gets to fly a UAV at the end of the sequence.
The company’s research indicated that about 90 percent of its target audience, much of which comprises software engineers, uses video games as its top form of socializing, according to Matthew Patron, Mitre’s lead software systems engineer.
The company investigated other sophisticated recruitment tools, including the virtual world “Second Life” and streaming video, before deciding to develop a video game.
Since the game was released six weeks ago, Mitre has showcased it through its Web site, at recruitment fairs and at college campuses. The company follows similar efforts by the U.S. Army and the U.K. MI-5 Security Service to use video games in recruitment.
The tool is something Mitre is using to brand itself as a fun, technology-savvy company, according to Todd Raphael, editor of the New York-based Electronic Recruiting Exchange in New York.
“It’s something I think will be very effective for Mitre, but I don’t think this is the answer for every company to its lack-of-talent problem,” Raphael said. “There are a lot of companies who try to be something they’re not, who try to be young and cool and fun, and that’s not what you get when you walk in the door.”
