Job Seekers Need Not Leave Second Life

An advertising agency plans to recruit employees through Second Life according to In a Virtual World, an Actual Job May Be Waiting, an article posted by Reuters yesterday. I’ll wait while you re-read that.

Ready to continue? Okay.

For quite a while job seekers have enjoyed the ability to search and apply for jobs via the Internet thanks to sites like Careerbuilder and Monster. TMP Worldwide is going further by planning job fairs in a virtual world called Second Life.

The idea is that the recruiter will use an avatar to interview job candidates through their avatars. (For those unfamiliar with Second Life, an avatar is the virtual character created by a user- kind of like playing dolls, but for grown-ups with computers and evidently too much time on their hands.)

Avatar-to-avatar interviewing spawns a slew of questions: Does standard interview attire still apply? Will there be a specialty Second Life clothing store for navy blue pinstripe suits and pearls?

More importantly, can the recruiter get a good sense of the interviewee’s real life personality and skills through a Second Life avatar? Assuming the interviewee must reveal their true identity as the interview process progresses, how do they separate their real life from their Second Life?

If you partake in a Second Life interview, please let me know how it works. As for me, I’m still here in my chair and there is mounting evidence that I can stay here for a very long time.


Related Links:
In a Virtual World, an Actual Job May Be Waiting
Second Life