The Industrial Revolution was the transition to new manufacturing processes in Great Britain, continental Europe, and the United States. It lasted in the period from about 1760 to sometime between 1820 and 1840. Many new technologies in the realm of agriculture and manufacturing saw thousands of job losses. Take the tractor, invented in 1889, which dismissed the need for horses and the people who rode, owned and trained them for this purpose. Or even mass lawnmowers, first invented in 1830, which dismissed the needs for farmers and workers whose job was to trim fields.
How exactly is this related to the metaverse, you wonder? Well, it is rumoured that that the metaverse will be the successor to the internet as we know it today: a digital twin of our world, encountered in both augmented and virtual interconnected realities as a persistent and synchronous experience. This has an affect on the world of marketing, advertising and creativity. Naturally, many of us are wondering how we can adapt our work to the metaverse and whether it will even be needed or relevant.
Many companies are already working on infiltrating within the metaverse realm to best prevent the problem as well as adapt to the questions surrounding recruitment. Take Korean electronics firm Samsung and motor company Hyundai who both held job fairs in a metaverse program known as ‘Gather Town’ in September, and professional services firm PwC has been experimenting with the technology.
Others like Jeremy Dalton, head of extended reality (XR) for PwC UK, are already making use of the metaverse as a means to recruit. “For recruitment, we are already using a metaverse platform, Virtual Park, to interview job candidates and offer them the ability to meet our people and find out more about our culture, values and opportunities […] Virtual worlds such as this enable us to reach a wider audience and, in some cases, makes an event even more accessible than it would be in the physical world as not everyone is able to travel to specific locations on specific days.”
However, there are others who speak on the exclusivity of recruitment via the metaverse. Alastair Gill, founder of HR consultancy Alchemy Labs and former head of people at telecommunications company GiffGaff, told HR magazine that adoption of the technology could be a double-edged sword when it comes to inclusion. “At the moment, the costs are a little high, so it could exclude people if it becomes something recruiters rely on”. He has a point if we consider that VR headsets costs from £300 to above £1,000.
I guess only time will tell, right?
