Online Gaming to Find a New Job – Examining Job Seekers’ Intention to Use Serious Games as a Self-Assessment Tool

Serious games can be used as self-assessment tools in recruiting processes. We develop a model explaining jobseekers’ intentions to use these applications, which help them to gain a realistic idea of the job at hand and allows them to submit their application only if the job truly fits their individual profile. Drawing on organizational justice theory and the technology acceptance literature, our model is empirically evaluated using data from 1,882 jobseekers. The results indicate that jobseekers’ intention to use self-assessments is driven in particular by its perceived ease of use, perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, and perceived selection fairness. In contrast, the issue of privacy security has no significant impact on jobseekers’ intentions. For firms, using serious games as a self-assessment tool can lead to a reduction in the total number of unsuitable applications they receive.