Gamifying Recruitment Tasks with Habitica

How I’ve gamified my recruitment tasks, and day to day habits — to measurably improve personal performance.

I’m a huge fan of gamification; it can inspire you to attain things you otherwise feel might be menial tasks, or it can drive you towards goals through measurable and actionable steps.

But, let’s be frank: ATS & CRM systems as well as corporate “gamification” initiatives usually fall flat. ATS systems often don’t provide nearly enough gamified elements, and if corporate is rolling out a new gamification method into your office: chances are that buy-in is going to be extremely low.

I can hear the groans and see the eye rolls of bringing something like this up in my office.

But that’s not to say that gamification doesn’t work — there are mountains of evidence to the contrary. It’s just that in order for anyone, for you, to get the most out of gamified habit building/changing — you need to elect to do so yourself!

So I did — and this is how.

Habitica — Formerly known as HabitRPG.

HabitRPG was released several years ago as a place where you could input behavioral changes that you’re hoping to make and, as the name implies, play a role playing game at the same time.

Now rebranded as Habitica the platform, now accessible on mobile, is better than ever.

You as a player create your avatar, arm him or her, earn awards, and spend them internally on the site. You can raise pets, ride mounts, party up with friends, and basically accomplish mini-tasks in the tiny Habitica universe.

And all of it is accomplished by the completion of tasks and the formation of habits.

The principles are simple — you put in the Habits you’re trying to form, theDailies you must accomplish, and the To-Do’s which can be time bound, but by default are just things you need to get done whenever.

For every daily you accomplish, for every To-Do you scratch of your list, or for every good habit you enforce (like standing for an hour at your desk vs sitting at your desk) — you earn points.

For me I use it for practically everything, from flossing, to drinking water, to gardening; and as this article implies: I use it religiously for accomplishing tasks at work. Including writing this article!*

These tasks can be one-off To-Do’s — like research a new technology. Or they can be recurring tasks that I need to accomplish daily, such as reaching out to 15 new candidates (per role), writing down my priorities for the following morning, and posting new jobs to the boards.

Now, as you likely know, there are heaps of data out there in the ether that confirm that gamification is helpful for driving individual progress both professionally and personally. And I, frankly, am a skeptic — because I know for certain that if anyone pushed this type of methodology on me: I’d absolutely hate it.

But ultimately I’m enjoying the heck out of this system. Not only do I get to gamify the process of a job that I already love — but I get to earn some gold and weapons in the process. :)

I highly recommend you give it a shot and please, let me know how you useHabitica to improve your business practices!

*How meta!