Introduction

Screening applicants for job openings is a big and time-consuming task, especially when you are an international chain with more than a hundred store openings every year across numerous markets. 

The HR department at JYSK were looking for a digital tool to ease the workload – and they had to look no further than the company’s own marketing department. JYSK had been using Playable’s gamification platform in consumer marketing for a while and had seen impressive results, so someone asked the obvious question: “Will a powerful marketing tool prove equally effective in HR? Could gamification help us screen candidates for store manager positions in a smart way?”

They decided to give it a go. So, a team with members from both JYSK and Playable designed a digital screening mechanism that would sort candidates into three groups: A, B and C.

The objective

The ambition was to engage the candidates in a meaningful way, spark some curiosity and create brand awareness at the same time. This would take more than just a link to a job website in advertisements. 

In short, the goals were:

1. Attract more applicants
2. Improve the quality of candidates
3. Save man-hours in the HR department
4. Strengthen JYSK’s brand as a great place to work

Services used

• Playable gamification platform 
• Export campaign registration automatically to external system (MAPP)

How the screening mechanism was designed

The first step was to define the ideal JYSK Store Manager. The team didn’t want a phantom, an imaginary “perfect” person who didn’t exist, but rather a representation of real people working at the frontline. JYSK already had 3,000 successful store managers out in the field, everyday heroes in flesh and blood, and the ideal store manager should be modelled upon them. 

So all JYSK store managers were asked a long list of questions about themselves (interests, music, spare time activities etc.) in order to define a “store manager persona”. The persona thus created was then used as the “template” in the campaign/ personality quiz.

From quiz to mail flow

Those who showed interest in a store manager job would be asked to answer the 19 questions in the quiz. Their answers would then be held against the findings from the “persona” questionnaire and the algorithm would place them in one of the three categories. 

After the test a candidate in the A and B categories would be led to a local campaign site with all the jobs available in the particular country. Then, after having applied to a job, HR would reach out and arrange an interview with A candidates and possibly B candidates. Those who ended up in the C category would receive an email with a voucher of 10% discount for a JYSK as a “thank you for taking the test”.

Performance above expectations

Executing a combined recruitment and employer branding campaign was a first for JYSK, and they regard it as a great success. It was one of the biggest digital campaigns they have done and it was confirmed that the Playable gamification platform is a valuable tool.

Being the first foray into digital candidate screening for the HR department at JYSK, it naturally required some focus and resources. But still, the subsequent campaign evaluation showed that dozens of hours had been saved for the HR specialists, who usually spend a lot of time sorting incoming candidates.

“I was astonished to learn that we could execute recruitment campaigns in 28 countries simultaneously with just a single of my colleagues dedicated to the task. We are saving a lot of time and money due to the scalability of the Playable platform.”

– Mette Schacht, Digital Marketing Operation Manager at JYSK

Seamless collaboration

Operating across many markets and directing candidates to different landing pages required a well-crafted campaign architecture. This was achieved through close collaboration between JYSK and Playable.

“Playable was up for the challenge and together it was solved very satisfactorily,” Mette explains. “Overall we are very happy about the partnership, because it provides us with the scalability, ease-of-use and support we need.”

An important part of digital marketing

Candidate screening is just one of many ways JYSK harnesses the power of gamification. Mette Schacht explains:

“We have used gamification campaigns in consumer marketing for more than a year now and we have begun to re-use our previous games. It is extremely easy for us to re-use our campaigns – we just have to change dates and prizes and go live again.”

The digital marketers at JYSK are constantly tracking results to collect learnings and keep improving their campaigns. It is very easy to adjust gamification campaigns in the Playable platform and to achieve amazing results just by amending an existing campaign on a few points. 

“It is great to experience that we save time and get better results as we focus on getting it live and get more people to interact with us” says Mette Schacht about how the platform helps her team keep a high pace.