Keywords

1 Unemployment in the Netherlands and Globally

Data from the Dutch institute for statistics state that in March 2014 there are a total of 691 thousand unemployed people in the Netherlands, which is 8.8 % of the Dutch labor force (CBS, 2014). This is the highest number of jobseekers in the Netherlands that was ever measured.

The high rate of unemployment does not only occur in the Netherlands, it is global. In fact, compared to other European countries, unemployment rate in the Netherlands is relatively low. In other countries it ranges from 6 % or below (Germany, Austria, and Luxembourg) to well above 17 % (Portugal, Spain, Greece) (Friedman, 2013). This data makes it evident that Europe is clearly struggling to recover from the economic crisis of 2008. The high unemployment rates and debts of some European countries have and will have effect on the recovery of other European countries due to the fact that all European countries financially depend on each other because of trade.

Nevertheless it is not just Europe struggling to recover from the global financial crisis. Estimates of the International Labour Organization (ILO) state that global unemployment increased by 5 million people in 2013 and that if it continues to follow this trend it will rise by a further 13 million people by 2018 reaching more than 215 million jobseekers (ILO, 2014). The areas with the largest slowdown of economic recovery are southern and eastern Europe, Latin America and South-East Asia. A lot of those people are young in age and have just entered the job market.

1.1 The Causes

The World Economic Forum lists the causes of youth unemployment as: population growth, education that is often not adequately matched to what is needed on the job marked, discouraged youth, lack of national comprehensive policy framework and deficiencies of labor market institution and policies (World Economic Forum, 2013).

The cause that is particularly motivating our research is the discouraged youth. The ILO reports that in 2012 there were 75 million youth worldwide that were out of work and that an additional 6 million have given up looking for a job completely (International Labour Organization, 2014). In addition to the youth there are other demographic categories affected by discouragement. Older generations that have lost jobs also have trouble staying motivated to find a job. Reuters (Mukitani, 2013) quotes assistant professor of economics Peter McHenry: “People are just giving up the search for work. A lot of them would like to work and they aren’t, that is a serious sickness in the economy”.

2 Integrating Jobseekers

This section will analyze the situation of the jobseeker. We first analyze the psychological effects of job loss and how they affect the motivation to actively look for a job. After we present some solutions that can help motivate the search for a job.

2.1 Job Loss

To understand why people are giving up searching for a job after losing a job, one needs to breakdown the effects of job loss. Job loss can be defined as an event where employment is involuntarily taken away from an individual. Job loss can have many negative psychological effects on people. De Witte (1993) describes that job loss causes activities to feel pointless, social contact to suffer, day-to-day life to be disrupted and deterioration of self-esteem and confidence can occur. After long-term unemployment, these symptoms may lead to depression.

These symptoms make it emotionally even harder for unemployed people to find a new job. Missing the structure of day-to-day life and missing the daily work commitment and time spent at the workplace causes the unemployed person to feel bored and unfulfilled.

More specifically, job loss can be broken down into seven emotional stages (Straits, 2014): denial, disbelief, outward anger, inward self-criticism, withdrawal, reflection, and acceptance. After denying, disbelieving and the blaming of third parties, a person who has just lost a job comes into stage four, inward self-criticism. At this point, confidence and self-esteem wane by overthinking past events and blaming the self. The next stage is withdrawal. After losing self-esteem and confidence, the person will hide and find excuses to avoid contact in the external world, which may (if the person does not receive enough social support) lead to depression.

2.2 Motivation

People are goal oriented. Everything we do is with an end goal in mind. We either perform activities because we enjoy the activity itself, or we perform activities for the reward it brings. As Deci and Ryan (2000, p. 60) describe: “Extrinsic motivation is a construct that pertains whenever an activity is done in order to attain some separable outcome. Extrinsic motivation thus contrasts with intrinsic motivation, which refers to doing an activity simply for the enjoyment of the activity itself, rather than its instrumental value”. When reading this description of extrinsic and intrinsic motivation one might think that for most people, job seeking is driven by extrinsic motivation. The act of looking for a job is generally not seen as a fun activity but rather the means for having a job. However, intrinsic motivation can be stimulated by making the activity in itself fun.

A common method for people to be intrinsically motivated is to approach a mundane activity not as work but as play. The classic example of this concept is demonstrated in Mark Twain’s novel The Adventures of Tom Sawyer. In the book, Tom is asked to whitewash a fence (Twain 1876). When one of his friends shows up and teases Tom for doing a mundane activity, Tom tells his friend that he enjoys doing it – “Like it? Well I don’t see why I oughtn’t to like it. Does a boy get a chance to whitewash a fence every day?” (Twain 1876, p. 14). Tom’s friend is convinced and asks if he can partake in the activity.

2.3 Setting Goals

A combination of short term and long term goals can have a significant effect on the motivation of job seekers. De Witte (1993) states that when setting a goal, the motivation for achieving that goal is determined by the confidence in achieving that goal. However, rarely, the motivation for achieving a goal is only determined by the close deadline. De Witte gives as example that studying for an exam is seldom motivating in itself, the possibilities that are opened for completing the exam are often motivation for completing it. It is known that people are not easily motivated for goals that are far off. Having a set of short term sub goals can help make a related long term goal more attractive if all sub goals lead to the realization of the long term goal. The short term sub goals serve as a bridge towards the long term goal. Job seekers need to create a plan that is filled with short term sub goals that help them focus on short term objectives. Next to the job seekers’ benefit of having short term objectives, having a reachable array of sub goals can also improve their confidence towards the long term goal making it more motivating. An important reason for the success of having sub goals is that the job seeker has the possibility to receive feedback. De Witte (1993) suggests that feedback can keep job seekers focused on their goals, and gives them clarity over the correctness of the path they are taking “Giving autonomy and informative feedback plays a key role in the development of intrinsic motivation, especially to people with self-development needs”.(De Witte, 1993, p. 7).

2.4 Social Support

Succeeding to make progress stimulates motivation, setbacks and failing to make progress can significantly lessen motivation. Studies have proven that providing social support to during these setbacks has a positive effect on the motivation to engage in job-seeking and the job-seeking self-efficacy. A rigorous experiment in 1989 split 928 recently unemployed adults randomly into an experimental group and a control group (Caplan et al. 1989). The experimental group were assigned trainers that supported the members with practical advice on job seeking as well as positive social reinforcement. The results were that the experimental group yielded higher quality reemployment in terms of earnings and job satisfaction, and higher motivation among those who were still unemployment.

3 Gamification

“Gamification is an informal umbrella term for the use of video game elements in non-gaming systems to improve user experience (UX) and user engagement.” (Deterding, Dixon, Khaled, and Nacke 2011, p. 1) Gamification is a new strategy that can engage and motivate groups of people by implementing game mechanics and dynamics in an existing non-gaming system. Gamification is used to gain customer loyalty, educate children and adults alike, it is even used to motivate in doing everyday tasks. A successful gamification system is for example the iOS app called EpicWin created by Rexbox and Supermono that motivates people to do daily activities by turning them into quests in a simulated adventure. Another example of a different gamification system is Badgeville, a system that motivates team members in large companies to cooperate by giving rewards and short term objectives.

3.1 Mechanics of Gamification

Two common terms in gamification are game mechanics and game dynamics. Game mechanics are the elements that game designers put in place to engage gamers, while game dynamics represent the fundamental needs and desires that are satisfied by the game mechanics. Bunchball (2010) presents six of the most prominent game mechanics that are used in gamification: points and levels, challenges, virtual goods, leader boards, and gifts and charities. There are many variations of these mechanics, but all of them can be generalized to six core mechanics.

Points quantify the users’ progress and quality of their engagement. People naturally enjoy collecting, and this makes distributing points for activities a very effective mechanic. Levels serve as milestones for the progress of the user. It is motivating to see your own progress and levels serve as an extra motivational boost by highlighting a certain milestone.

Challenges give the user a clear goal to strive for. As discussed in chapter 2.3, setting clear and attractive objectives can have a good effect on motivation. These objectives can also be used as an opportunity to entice the user to explore different parts of the system.

Virtual goods are non-physical objects that have value in the game world. They can be anything from badges and decorations to virtual clothing and accessories that are bought with the currency of the system or rewards for completing certain objectives in the system. Often virtual goods can be gifted to other users in the system.

Leader boards quantify the results of the competitions between users. It gives users a chance to compare themselves to other users in the system. This can also have positive and negative effects. Competitive participants can gain self-esteem by climbing the leader boards and set goals for them to improve. Non-competitive participants can become demotivated when they see that they are on a low position in the leader board. Some participants may not want to compete but just improve themselves; these are all valid reasons to never force participants to be placed on the leader boards unless the goal of the system is improve competition in users.

People can have a lot of different goals when gifting to others. They might want to gain a friend, win prestige or respect or simply want to feel better by enhancing their self-esteem by giving to others. Participants can use gifts in gamification systems to improve their relationships with other participants.

3.2 Dynamics of Gamification and Gamer Types

The reason that people are motivated by the game mechanics is because of the game dynamics. Bunchball (2010, p. 10) links the game dynamics to human desires – “People have fundamental needs and desires. Game designers have known for years how to address these needs within gaming environments, and gamification now enables these precepts to be applied more broadly”.

Figure 1 displays a table that links the game mechanics to game dynamics (named “human desires” in the image). Each game mechanic has a set of linked human desires represented by the blue dots, and one perfect match represented by a green dot. Not all people have the same personality and the same desires and this affects which is their most pursued game dynamic. The psychologist Richard Bartle proposed that players of video games can be divided into four different personality types; Killers, Achievers, Socialites and Explorers (Bartle 1996) One can tell the personality type of gamers by analyzing what games they play and how they play them. Killers enjoy competition and like to compare themselves to other players and are mostly motivated by competition and challenges. Achievers are completionists at heart that enjoy collecting. This type of gamers will be most interested in the game mechanics that grant them status and achievement. Socialites like to co-operate and make friends. This type of gamers will be most attracted to engage in mechanics that grant them satisfaction in self-expression and altruism. Explorers are the free spirits that want to experience new things all the time. In traditional open world games, explorers would want to explore the environment, in gamification systems they would want to explore and experiment with all of the mechanics.

Fig. 1.
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Human desires linked to game mechanics (Bunchball, 2010)

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4 Gamification for Work Reintegration

To find an aspect that can be gamified, one needs to seek something that all jobseekers can identify with. An artifact that is common among all jobseekers is the CV. A CV is a testament of the professional progress that a person has gone through and is necessary for all people that want to find a job. The CV shall be used as the starting or main foundational focal point for the proposed gamification platform.

A CV can already be linked to three human desires presented in Fig. 1: status, achievement and self-expression. The system-concept we present in this paper is focused in improving the quality of the participant’s resume. The CV is only the subject for entry into the system. After accessing the system, the user will enter into a community with fellow job seekers. The system is designed to motivate and guide the user into integrating or reintegrating into working life. There are many services that provide jobseekers help with improving the quality of their CVs, but many of them cost money and make the resume fall into a pre-defined template. Thus, the concept we present in this paper can be an alternative business model to the existing ones.

4.1 Core User Requirement of the System and System Description

The requirements of this system are in line with the desires of job seekers. Our system needs to create a daily structure and clear goals and sub goals for the job seeker. The system should also encourage and facilitate social contact and motivate the user to make new connections. The system should also make the activities of the jobseeker seem more meaningful and attractive.

The proposed gamification system is an online platform that encourages and facilitates (i) improving resume of job seekers and (ii) motivating them in the search for a job. In the system, users are rewarded credits to give feedback on the resumes of others. They can then request feedback on their resume from other users by spending credits earned in the game. Users can also spend earned credits in “purchasing” other rewards like training courses, job magazines, etc. (Fig. 2).

Fig. 2.
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A mock-up screen of the proposed system displaying the review system which is used to give feedback on the CVs of others.

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Economy and Virtual Goods. The system features three different currencies that have different uses and different ways of obtaining them. Activity points represent the experience of the player and are gained with everything the player does in the system. They are mainly meant to give the user a sense of progression and a means for comparison with other users. Reward points represent the quality of the user’s feedback. When a user has a lot of reward points it indicates to other players that his/her feedback is often appreciated. Credits are granted to the user when the user earns reward points. Users can use credits to request feedback from other players on their own CV or to purchase real life and virtual goods.

The user progresses through the game by earning activity points and reward points. By progressing through ranks, the user unlocks more features in the game. The reasoning behind this is to ease the player into the more advanced features like the standard pass feedback. A sense of progression will make the user feel more competent.

The goal of the challenge system is to provide the user with concrete short term objectives. These objectives can introduce users to unexplored parts of the system and motivate users to increase their effort. Completing an objective can give the player a boost in confidence and a sense of competence.

As aforementioned, users can use credit points to purchase virtual goods and real life rewards. As discussed earlier this reward system can lead to over-justification. However, in this case, the activity that users practice is not widely considered to be an enjoyable activity. Moreover, the rewards that are presented in the system are all means to achieve the same goal as the system motivates the users for.

Although interaction between users is kept anonymous when transferring feedback, users have the possibility to connect with one another after the completion of the transfer. The system does not aspire to be a social network but encourages interaction between users. However, this system also has the potential to build a strong community as it shares one important aspect with Fitocracy; likeminded users with same goals (Fig. 3).

Fig. 3.
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Part of the concept UI displaying the user’s progression and achievements

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5 System Evaluation

To test the effectiveness of the proposed gamification system, two systems were designed and tested. One system represented the proposed gamification system with all of its game mechanics in place. The other represented the proposed system without any of the gamification elements. The research design was between-subjects and the measurement instrument an online questionnaire distributed to 34 jobseekers.

The questionnaire was created with the purpose of measuring the system’s perception of use. It included seven-point Likert scale items such as: “I think this system will motivate me to improve my CV”. Participants were requested to give their opinion on the review, feedback and overall system whereas the questionnaire for the gamified system had additional statements about the reward, profile, challenge and network system.

5.1 Results

T-Test Results. The two statements regarding motivation that were included in both questionnaires were: “I think this system will motivate me to improve my CV” and “I think this system will help motivate me when looking for a job”. We filtered data captured by job seekers (N = 68).

Both aforementioned statements were analyzed using the T-test, nevertheless the results did not yield a statistically significant difference. We did observe though the mean values to be in the expected direction. For example, the question: “I think this system will motivate me to improve my CV” between the non-gamified questionnaire score yielded a mean value of M = 5.15 (SD = 1.019, N = 34) and the gamified questionnaire score M = 5.29 (SD = 1.404, N = 34), t(66) = −.494, p = .623.

The same observation was more obvious on the question: “I think this system will help motivate me when looking for a job” between the non-gamified questionnaire score (M = 4.47, SD = 1.331, N = 34) and the gamified questionnaire score (M = 5.00, SD = 1.633, N = 34), t(66) = −1.465, p = 0.148.

Descriptive Results. The questionnaire also included items beyond the system’s evaluation and was answered by job seekers (N = 68) as well as participants not actively looking for a job (N = 62). One apparent finding is that 112 of the 130 participants believe that their CVs can be improved. This means the majority of the participants fit the target audience requirement.

Six participants used a review service before and most of them agreed that the service they used was useful. One of the services was an online tool that assisted in building their CV. Two of the services were private services. The remaining three were educational institutions. This means that none of the participants had ever used a service like the one proposed in this paper.

The first statement about the system was about the review system. Figure 4 displays the results for this statement from both questionnaires. The great majority of participants agreed or somewhat agreed that the review system would be useful to them.

Fig. 4.
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Answers to the statement “I think the review systems presented are useful for reviewing the CVs of others”.

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The graph in Fig. 5 displays the survey results of the statements about gamification features in the gamified questionnaire. Overall, for each feature, most participants agreed or somewhat agreed that the feature would motivate them. However, it is clear that some features were more appreciated. The feedback system is especially well received. 54 out of 65 participants agreed or somewhat agreed to this feature being motivating. The reward system and network system are both well received as well, but the profile and challenge systems had mixed results.

Fig. 5.
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Participants’ opinion on the gamified elements demonstrated in the gamified survey.

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6 Discussion

In both questionnaires, a great majority of the participants agreed that the proposed system would be useful and motivating and the data pointed preference towards the gamified system. As it is the first CV tool that works in this way, it might have a big impact on the industry. The biggest difference between traditional CV tools and the proposed system is that there are no experts necessary for the system to function. This can be seen as a benefit or as a limitation. A benefit of not having exclusively experts is that feedback is given free of cost and more rapidly. On the other hand, a limitation to this aspect is that the quality of feedback could be perceived unprofessional and therefore less useful. However, we believe that this limitation will wear off in the long-term. When the system has more active users and a hierarchy of users has been established by rewarding quality, the quality of feedback will increase greatly as examples are set and a culture has been established.

Another limitation of the system may be the subjectivity of CVs. There is no unique, single standard of a good CV and different users will have different ideas about the ideal CV. This may cause users to receive contradicting feedback and leave them clueless about which one to pursue. The system should encourage users to make their own independent decisions. Independence (having a clear individual stand) is a necessary value in a highly networked, self-organizing environment.

A reason for the mixed reviews of different gamification features may be the difference in personality types. As presented previously, there are four different gamer types that each has a different preference in game mechanics and experience. The challenge and progression systems would be attractive mechanics to achievers and killers as it gives the user something to collect and clear goals to complete.

7 Conclusion

The worldwide unemployment crisis has led to many people being unemployed for long periods of time, it has also made it harder for graduates to find employment. Long term unemployment can lead to the deterioration of self-esteem, a lack of day-to-day structure, a lack of social interaction and many more negative psychological effects which can all lead to depression. This paper has established that there is a great need for systems that motivate and support jobseekers. We presented the mechanics, dynamic and types of gamification. The dynamics of gamification are similar to the needs of jobseekers. This means that the use of gamification mechanics can solve the motivation problems if used in an effective matter.

Further, we presented a gamification system in which jobseekers improve the quality of their CVs. The system contains several gamification mechanics that satisfy the needs of jobseekers. The system contains a progression system that visualizes the improvements of the user, a challenge system that provides clear objectives to the player and rewards that give the player added extrinsic motivation.

To evaluate the effectiveness of the designed system online questionnaires with job-seekers compared two proposed systems for helping job seekers with improving their CVs: a system with gamification features and one without any gamification features. The results, although not statistically significant, point in favor of the gamified system for motivating job seekers. The feedback system, reward system and network system were perceived to be the most motivational gamified elements. The feedback system gives users the same short term and clear objectives as challenges do. We imagine this review and feedback system to be used effectively by governmental organizations.