You Play World of Warcraft? You're Hired!

Fascinating article by John Seely Brown and Douglas Thomas on how interactive gaming is developing collaborative and leadership skills that beome highly valuable to enlightened employers.

the process of becoming an effective World of Warcraft guild master amounts to a total-immersion course in leadership. A guild is a collection of players who come together to share knowledge, resources, and manpower. To run a large one, a guild master must be adept at many skills: attracting, evaluating, and recruiting new members; creating apprenticeship programs; orchestrating group strategy; and adjudicating disputes. Guilds routinely splinter over petty squabbles and other basic failures of management; the master must resolve them without losing valuable members, who can easily quit and join a rival guild. Never mind the virtual surroundings; these conditions provide real-world training a manager can apply directly in the workplace.

And that's exactly what Gillett is doing. He accepted Yahoo!'s offer and now works there as senior director of engineering operations. "I used to worry about not having what I needed to get a job done," he says. "Now I think of it like a quest; by being willing to improvise, I can usually find the people and resources I need to accomplish the task." His story - translating experience in the virtual world into success in the real one - is bound to become more common as the gaming audience explodes and gameplay becomes more sophisticated. The day may not be far off when companies receive résumés that include a line reading "level 60 tauren shaman in World of Warcraft."

The savviest employers will get the message.

Also worth a read Children benefit from exposure to digital culture

Comments

[Graham Hill]

Alan

I suspect that once having a high on-line gaming skill-rating becomes a desirable quality for potential empoyees, then Baumol's "free-market innovation machine" will kick-in and they will be able to buy or rent appropriate skill-ratings from others on the free market.

Is this a good thing? Probably yes, even though it is tantamount to lying on your CV. But then CVs are hardly better than a lottery anyway.

Graham Hill
Independent Management Consultant

[alan moore]

Hi there Graham,

I don't really get the point, perhaps you might like expand and share your theory?

BR

Alan

[jeff]

I think what your exactly right about a guild master havinging to have traits like responsibility, loyalty, and team work. My guild is still small though i'v had it for 4 months now because i like all my members to be able to come to me with anything and i figure that privlage goes away when you enter the 100 members mark and so on.

[Buy WoW Gold]

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Because i think One of the great things about in-game money and virtual economies is that they never went through this whole economic meltdown. So take that to all of those people who think the real world is better then computer games! Buy WoW Gold

Regards

[Buy WoW Gold]

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[Commission Pimp]

I think that first of all playing world or warcraft won't really improve your communicative skills... you can be the toughest badass in the game who orders around and gets things dome, but a wimp in real life who nobody listens to... so no, in my opinion playing games doesn't prepare you for the real life.

[Secret Commission System]

lol, it's like... you watch action movies, you must be really fit!
or you watch porn, you must have a lot of sex!
or whatever other absurdity you may think of... I mean, because one plays a game doesn't mean that he's a good leader... it's sickens me that now they search "leaders" because they play world of warcraft... I don't think the great leaders of the past ever needed that...

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