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Business.
商業。
Recruitment.
人才招聘。
Work and play.
工作兼娛樂。
The gamification of hiring.
招聘游戲化。
THE rules of Happy Hour are deceptively simple. You are a bartender. Your challenge is to tell what sort of drink each of a swelling mob of customers wants by the expressions on their faces. Then you must make and serve each drink and wash each used glass, all within a short period of time. Play this video game well and you might win a tantalising prize: a job in the real world.
游戲Happy Hour的規則看起來十分簡單。你是一位酒保，你的挑戰是察言觀色，一群趾高氣揚的黑幫客戶進入酒吧，你需要根據他們的面部表情判斷每個人要喝何種酒，然后斟酒擦酒杯。所有這一切都需要在短時間內完成，如果玩這個游戲表現出色的話，你誘人的獎勵是在真實世界獲得工作。
Happy Hour, which will be unveiled to the public on May 28th, is one of several video games developed by Knack, a start-up founded by Guy Halfteck, an Israeli entrepreneur. The games include a version of Happy Hour in which sushi replaces booze, Words of Wisdom (a word game) and Balloon Brigade (which involves putting out fires with balloons and water). They are designed to test cognitive skills that employers might want, drawing on some of the latest scientific research. These range from pattern recognition to emotional intelligence, risk appetite and adaptability to changing situations.
由一位以色列企業家Guy halfteck新創始的公司Knack開發的眾多視頻游戲中的一款Happy Hour預計在5月28日發布。這一系列的游戲包含一個用壽司替代美酒的Happy Hour版本游戲，Words of Wisdom（一種文字游戲）和氣球大隊游戲（用氣球和水去滅火）。這些游戲都是借助一些最新的科學研究，測試雇主可能比較注重的認知能力，如模式識別、情商、風險承受度和對變化環境的適應性。
A pilot now under way with students at Yale combines the results of games with academic grades. As little as ten minutes of play can yield enough data to predict performance, says Mr Halfteck.
這款游戲現在正在耶魯大學的學生中進行試點，將其游戲的結果與學業成績結合在一起。Mr Halfteck聲稱，只要玩十分鐘就有足夠的數據來預測個人的表現。
Knack combines three fashionable trends: gaming, the use of massive amounts of data and the application of behavioural insights from science. According to Chris Chabris of the Centre for Collective Intelligence at MIT, a member of the Knack team, games have huge advantages over traditional recruitment tools, such as personality tests, which can easily be outwitted by an astute candidate. Many more things can be tested quickly and performance can't be faked on Knack's games, he says. The two biggest challenges, according to Mr Chabris, are ensuring the games are fun to play and convincing recruiters, who typically make no attempt to measure cognitive skills, to pay attention to these new data.
Knack將三種Fashion的潮流結合在一起：游戲，大量數據處理以及科學角度的行為預測。麻省理工學院綜合智能中心的Chris Chabri是Knack團隊成員之一，他認為：游戲相比傳統的招聘工具有非常大的優點，比如傳統的個性測試，很容易被聰明的應聘者蒙混過關，而通過Knack游戲，很多方面能夠快速的測定而且不可能作假。Chris Chabri表示最大的兩個挑戰來自于確定游戲足夠好玩，并且能夠說服那些往往不對認知技能進行測試的招聘者把注意力放在這些數據上。
Some firms seem to see the potential. The GameChanger unit of Shell, which seeks out new disruptive technologies for the oil giant, is about to test if Knack can help it identify innovators. Bain & Company, a consultancy, is to run a pilot: it will start by getting current staff to play the games, to see which skills make for a successful consultant. (The ability to charge a lot for stating the obvious is presumably not one of them.) "If someone can materially improve our ability to select the best talent, that is worth a lot to us," says Mark Howorth, a recruiter at Bain. And if not, at least the process will be fun.
一些公司似乎看到了潛力。殼牌公司中為石油巨頭尋找突破性新技術的GameChanger部門即將測試Knack是否能幫助它去發現創新者。貝恩咨詢公司在這方面將啟動一次試點：它將讓現有職員參與去玩些游戲以幫助決定哪些技能是有助于去做一個成功的咨詢者。（收取高昂的費用卻說些顯而易見的東西，這種能力大概不是其中一個）"如果有人能顯著提高我們挑選最好人才的能力，那么這對于我們是非常有價值的。"貝恩公司的招聘者Mark Howorth如是說。當然，如果不能，起碼這玩意兒有點意思。
