Recruiting experienced virtual reality (VR) engineers is getting more and more difficult. This is especially true because the technology depicted in the movie Total Recall is actually coming to fruition!
What is Virtual Reality Technology?
Virtual reality is a technology that creates a simulated environment by viewing a screen inside of a headset. Viewers see what is being displayed on the screen when they wear the headset. It feels as if you are actually physically present with audio input and vibrant visuals that move as you do. The current leading producers of VR are China and the United States.
Travel Industry Fast Recruiting Virtual Reality Technology!
The travel industry has been experimenting with virtual reality and hoping to increase tourist numbers and raise awareness of attractions. The industry feels travel customers can benefit from VR. These benefits range from small things like booking a hotel room to big decisions like selecting travel destinations.
Virtual reality can help customers choose what will best suit their interests. For instance, instead of merely looking at pictures of a hotel, they can actually experience the room by taking a 365-degree virtual tour.
Additionally, VR benefits attractions just as much as customers. Potential visitors can experience a city, feel its culture and vibe before committing to visiting. This ensures a high-quality, enjoyable trip.
As an example, in Canada users can experience the Great Bear Rainforest with views of the glacier, coastlines and alpines. These phenomenal views provide a great way to relax and experience places that someone might want to visit in the future.
As in Total Recall, this technology is referred to as “digital teleportation,” which is the end goal for many developers. Digital teleportation will reinvent how we experience and see the world. Virtual reality has enormous potential and room for growth as a result.
Investors are gathering worldwide to discuss its profitability and potential. According to recent research, the market is expected to increase from $7.9 billion last year to $44.7 billion by 2024. This emerging market will provide users with accessibility and ease without a doubt.
Staffing Managers Face Many VR Recruiting Challenges
Recruitment by the travel industry is just one example of how VR applications have expanded over the past decade. Scientists, engineers, research and development, information technology, technical and manufacturing technology talent have tried to improve virtual reality technology. Their hope is to make it more user-friendly and affordable.
Companies around the world are investing in this “next big thing”. Thanks to their efforts, virtual reality has grown from something in fantasy movies to an everyday useful technology.
This expansion of VR will also necessitate the recruitment of even more engineers with virtual reality experience in the future. But how can we as a society accomplish this challenge? It requires extensive measures to ensure more VR talent is available for these expanded recruitment needs.
Four Steps To Creating And Recruiting Future Engineers
As I shared in a previous article, the World Economic Forum recently shared four steps for expanding the engineering talent field. They include:
1. The engineering field must inspire the next generation by better telling this story. (E.G. current engineers seek careers with more strong sense of duty and purpose.)
2. Be bold, be brave, be honest. (E.G. engineering needs to tie reward packages to diversity results. Issues need to be openly addressed to actuate change, including the unconscious biases that prevent fundamental change.)
3. Be flexible. (E.G. end the traditional “workday”. Tech-empowered employees are pushing to shift their hours and work to times best suited to their own approach and lives.)
4. Value and support your people. (E.G. people will still matter as the very human skills of critical analysis, strategic thinking, problem-solving, communication and empathy become more valuable).
Improve Your Candidate Interviews With The 1 to 10 Scale
Long ago Strategic Search Corporation realized engineering recruiting is getting more and more difficult! As a result, we regularly consult with staffing managers to make changes in their recruiting efforts which will help them fill their engineer and technical job openings more quickly. Our recruitment team offers 12 recruitment solutions to better attract key talent, including virtual reality.
One of those tools we offer our clients is the Twelve Commandments of Recruiting. This tool helps streamline the engineering recruiting process. One particularly helpful commandment tip is the “1 to 10 rating scale”.
This 2nd Commandment – “1 to 10 rating scale” interview question – helps you to streamline your interviewing efforts. With it you ask your job candidates to rank themselves on a scale of 1 to 10 on your key job attributes.
The answer scale starts at 1, which signifies no job experience in that attribute. Five means average job experience in that attribute and 10 means job mastery of that attribute. You should ask, for example: “On a scale of 1 to 10, how good of a product design engineer are you?”
The benefit of the 1 to 10 rating scale interview question is it forces your job candidates so they can more precisely identify what their actual job skills are for you. So, remember to employ the 1 to 10 rating scale interview question for all of your key job attributes.
This recruiting tip will help improve your engineering job recruitment, especially for difficult to fill jobs in virtual reality. It also applies to any other staffing needs where demand outstrips talent supply.
These are just a few of the employment tips we have gathered over 30 years of recruiting experience. They universally apply to a wide range of jobs, not just engineer jobs and engineering hiring. You can apply them to most jobs and employment situations wherever you are having recruitment issues.
Call me today at 312-944-4000 to discuss how we can assist with your engineering staffing efforts especially in the highly competitive virtual reality, artificial intelligence, robotics and Internet of Things fields. Or click here for my full contact information.
