Metaverse - how will it affect the recruitment industry?

Our London based Talent Scout Giulia Liparota gives us her thoughts into what she thinks the Metaverse means for the recruitment industry...

We can certainly say that recruitment has changed massively over the years. For those that don’t know, recruitment was born after the Second World War when the population was halved, and it was a true struggle to find workers.

Since then, recruitment has had a huge development. We started with advertising jobs in newspapers, then cold calls, then LinkedIn, and then covid.

Covid gave us higher chances of meeting candidates easily, but it also meant that anyone can turn on the camera with zero effort just out of curiosity which, in some cases, can also mean less commitment as opposed to before when travelling to meet your recruiter obviously meant that you were interested.

Just like text messages and emails expanded the way we send written messages to each other, the Metaverse will expand and also modify the way we interact with each other and companies, spend and earn money, and also the way we spend our time.

Now everyone is talking about the Metaverse, but what is it? What will this change in recruitment, and how will this impact our lives?

I don’t have “the answer” for that, but I am curious by nature, and I made it a mission to provide our readers (Hi mum!) with an easy point of view on the matter.

The Metaverse, in a nutshell, is a parallel world meant to expand what we have already been experiencing in technology. Just like text messages and emails expanded the way we send written messages to each other, the Metaverse will expand and also modify the way we interact with each other and companies, spend and earn money, and also the way we spend our time.

Specific to recruitment, one thing that came to mind is the way we are now in limbo between the pre-covid and post-covid ways of recruiting. Pre-covid, we would meet people, and we would be able to add the human touch that is a fundamental component of recruitment. Post-covid, Zoom took over, and even though we could meet respecting safety measures, at times it is just faster to switch on the camera and jump on a virtual room.

each Metaverse has its own currency, which means that we could potentially earn and sell without the use of physical banks to slow down the process and earn on our exchanges.

All of us are still adjusting to that, there are some who love it, some who hate it and some others who do not really mind it. Here is where the Metaverse comes to potentially play a big part in changing the rules of the game. In the Metaverse, we could host fairs and events to engage potential and existing clients and candidates. Now, a question may be - how would this differ from an in-person fair or a Zoom event? Essentially, the Metaverse adds a sense of community to these events. First of all, when you meet someone in the Metaverse, there is a shared venue. While we all may have gotten comfortable taking meetings from our beds, there is an added layer to meeting someone when you do it in a common/shared space. If you think about it, being able to interact with the environment adds a level to any encounter. Nonetheless, currently, each Metaverse has its own currency, which means that we could potentially earn and sell without the use of physical banks to slow down the process and earn on our exchanges. This could expand our opportunity to work worldwide, find talent overseas and connect more people to jobs and companies.

Honestly, I am curious about what impact the Metaverse can have on recruitment, I see how it can influence our jobs to be done in a safer way while maintaining that sense of human touch. 

However, the reality is that the Metaverse is still a work in progress, and most of the people participating in it are the “early adopters”. Many like myself are speculating about how it will be used and the impact that it will have. I can do the best I can to share how I feel it will impact our jobs, but the truth is that none of us will know what role it will play until it happens. The most we can do is to keep our minds open and be ready for anything!