Emotional intelligence and VR in the hiring process, our case study

Promwad is one of the first companies in the world who hires engineers with the help of a virtual reality headset. The professional magazine “Human Resources” published an article about the Emotional intelligence and VR in the hiring process in its latest July issue and interviewed our HR director.

We are implementing an unusual scenario for interviews: the applicant is offered to wear an Oculus Go virtual reality headset to see their future working environment and get acquainted with our projects.

Recall that Mark Zuckerberg demonstrated Oculus Go, a stand-alone VR headset, at the fourth annual developer conference in 2017. Sales of the device started in spring 2018, and only a few months later the novelty began to be used in Promwad. 

 

Photo: Oculus Go, a stand-alone virtual reality headset

In the last two years, we have expanded our engineering team by almost 50% and learned from our own experience just how important it is to build up an emotional contact from the first days of communication with future employees.

It is clear that they're coming to us not only to satisfy their emotional needs. Developers are attracted by complex hardware and software dev projects for the global market. For 15 years Promwad has developed a special atmosphere and communication style that we value and want to maintain. Therefore, when new people come to our team, our HR managers want from their first personal meeting to tune in to a more trusting relationship and find a candidate who is on the same wavelength with us not only professionally, but also emotionally.

 

Photo: a job interview with the use of Oculus Go at the Promwad office 

It is one thing when the interview takes place according to the standard script: applicants talks about themselves and their projects, we ask clarifying questions and share expectations about new employees — all this is friendly, but still too formal. Most of our candidates find it difficult to open up to strangers: excitement and caution can been seen.