Game-based elearning to train for confident and bias-free hiring

OUR PARTNER

Dakota County

Dakota County is a government organization providing a wide range of services to the citizens of Dakota County, Minnesota.  

THE NEED

The HR Department at Dakota County had a lot on their plate and not a lot of time to get it done.

And they had a pressing need: to create consistency and ensure compliance in their hiring process.

They wanted an elearning course that could make hiring a more digestible step-by-step process and train managers to avoid unconscious bias.

Where we began

Collaborating with the HR team, we sought to understand the driving need for the course:

  • Who was the training for and how would it be used?

  • What was Dakota County’s current training method and what needed improvement?

  • What makes hiring tricky for new hiring managers? And where does unconscious bias typically creep in during the hiring process?

After reviewing the current hiring process and brainstorming with the client team, we jumped into designing a gamified elearning solution. This course design ensured new managers could understand and practice the hiring process, while exploring common hiring biases.

Where we ended up

We created The Hiring Game for Dakota County managers. This course simulates a real hiring situation to help new managers:

Sequentially practice the eight phases of the hiring process, by hiring for a fictional department role

Identify hiring criteria, review job candidates, select the best interview questions, and more

Access the correct intranet-linked job aids and rely on an HR generalist to make the best hiring choices

Spot and manage their own biases to ensure a fair and ethical hiring process

The Hiring Game allows new managers to practice hiring steps, make mistakes, and keep playing the game until they “win” by making the best hiring choices.

Want a sneak peek of the course?

Big wins

The development and launch of Dakota County’s Hiring Game

  • Clarified and streamlined the organization’s hiring process

  • Inspired the development of a hiring intranet site to share important hiring resources across the organization

  • Increased the organizational awareness around unconscious hiring bias and strategies for avoiding it

We were selected! We were asked to present our hiring game solution to hundreds of our peers at the 2019 DevLearn conference.

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