The Balance of Recruitment & Selection in Esports

To preface my piece: in my previous writing on coaching, which you can read here, people told me it was subjective or opinionated. That was entirely its purpose. These are my musings and opinions; I do not claim for them all to be correct, or even mostly correct. I do wish, however, to explore and express my views, and to share them with you.

Sorry in advance.

As a continuation on an issue that’s been raised to me previously, I want to use a framework that is influenced by my life outside of esports. To those of you who don’t know, I’m about to finish my psychology degree, and am hoping to pursue a career in organisational psych, which is basically a longer term to describe HR.

Recruitment and selection is a small facet of exploring human resources. Strictly, it’s usually not the first step in the employment process, generally there is a job or role analysis earlier which helps to aid recruitment. However, recruitment and selection are fairly obvious terms. It requires the employer to recruit a pool of potential candidates for a position, then based off different techniques to select the most appropriate.

Oceania has a very unique culture. We’re tight-knit and rooted in friendship. As a community, this has many positive effects for relationships and the atmosphere. From a professional sense, I believe this is often very detrimental. Are we tight-knit, or are we impenetrable? Are we rooted in friendship, or are we exclusive and preferential?

No other esport region has such a high value on relationships and networking, specifically in relation to entry level positions.

And I don’t think that’s arguable. It feels as though there is a clique that operates within Oceania, and the uninitiated can find it near impossible to break in. While friendships and networking are important, so too is performance and merit.

I very strongly believe that Oceania is friendship-oriented, rather than performance-oriented. In terms of outcomes in a competitive sphere, it should not be surprising which of the two is the more appropriate in terms of competition. Recently, after releasing my thoughts on coaching, people have come to me (and I encourage anyone who’s considered it, to approach me or anyone) saying they want to pursue something in esports, but feel as though they cannot because entering the scene makes breaking out of prison look easy.

Contrary to the opinion of some, there is honestly no reason esports’ recruitment and selection is not handled like any other industry. For any given position, from player to manager to coach to social media coordinator — it’s in the best interest of the organisation, and the industry as a whole, to hire the most suitable candidate for any position. Obviously, the criteria used to measure a potential person’s suitability will vary on a range of influence; but the core tenet remains the same:

All organisations want the right people, for the right positions.

There is endless literature and wisdom surrounding how best to recruit, select, and develop talent; it’s a widely accessible subject. There are ways to diminish and mitigate bias, ways to measure a variety of traits or skills, and ways to identify the competencies relevant to the position. Currently, most positions aren’t even listed to the public. If you wanted to become the manager, coach, or analyst for an Oceanic team, more often than not you’d have to know them directly, or apply blindly. Traditionally, recruitment and selection can be a costly process, employing people to hire, advertising, shortlisting and interviewing processes and so on. But none of that is applicable to Oceania’s esports scene. In fact, the common recipe for success is almost to write a twitlonger — even if your team or organisation has a website to publish on.

There isn’t any reason we don’t even try to, as a collective, to publicly list and recruit from the community. There is endless amounts of passion in the community trying to break in, but is rarely given the opportunity. And I don’t even feel like compensation is a valid argument to raise either, because the majority are prepared to work as volunteers just for the enjoyment and experience, right?

Now, at the other end of the spectrum is a whole other issue. Personally, and previously I made a snide tweet about it somewhere, I believe that some organisations are over-recruiting. This in fact can be detrimental to the continued and sustainable growth of an organisation, for reasons such as job and role ambiguity or conflict, lack of suitable incentives, diminished feelings of challenge and so on.

We have organisations who’ve recruited nearly every imaginable title, from Head of Marketing to Chief Financial Officer, despite probably not needing either; and certainly not hiring ‘qualified’ candidates. I won’t target this to any organisation in particular, but I implore you to scroll through the ‘following’ of an organisation’s twitter account to find all of their subordinates and read the array of superficial or pointless staff positions they have.

How do we find the balance?

It’s a fickle area, but something the scene should ought to look to improve upon. Organisations should be performing some form of rudimentary analysis to understand what they’re in need of, what positions are pivotal to the expansion and development of their organisation, and then creating a plan to achieve the goals they’ve created. If this does entail hiring 10+ new staff members, including a Head of Marketing and a CFO, then by all means do it. However, I feel any honest organisation founder or owner will see how redundant these positions are to a two-month start up that lacks capital.

Which brings me to my next point: a lack of capital. By this, I’m referring to the painfully low amounts of money within the scene. A lack of high exposure and high-level competition results in less investment, which in turn results in less overall money invested into the organisations supporting the players and teams. This is obviously symptomatic of a young and developing region, so don’t digest this as a cry for more sponsorship or investment. In fact, maybe it’s nearly the opposite. Money isn’t the only form of capital organisations have at their disposal — but it’s often treated as the be-all and end-all. Human capital is by far the biggest asset any organisation in Oceania will have currently, or possibly there’s an argument it’ll always remain the most important asset. As discussed, there isn’t an endless supply of talent and people are not always going to be replaceable. This ranges from players to managers to coaches to anything. Examples of this can be seen through Diamond level players in the OPL. In the context of the international scene, a Diamond player being a professional could almost be considered laughable, whereas in Oceania it might be the best option available. Degrees and qualifications are only slowly becoming more mandatory in overseas positions, which would suggest OCE is a long way off that. This maybe extends itself to a discussion of talent development and retention, but possibly for another time.

Investing in your human capital is what will drive an organisation’s growth.

• If you have no staff because your recruitment program is too elitist OR,
• If you overstaff and lack meaningful positions and employees,

then you’re not adequately investing in human capital.

Investing in human capital is a critical step. If there are issues around finding the appropriate staff members, be it a lack of good coaches or analysts, a lack of good managers, or whatever position is in the spotlight — there is a concern for the future of the industry, especially in Oceania’s corner, if there isn’t any meaningful investment into human resources. Comments have been made to me that it’s fruitless to attempt to break into Oceania’s scene, because of the culture and lack of opportunity. If we’re not looking to improve it, and work top-down, what hope is there?

I recognise I haven’t necessarily created any meaningful solutions to these areas, and in part I’m against trying to. I cannot define what is the best approach or mechanism for every organisation. I cannot say what will or won’t work for individuals. But I can say, and have, and will continue to do so, is that it’s rare to see an organisation showcase intelligent and robust recruitment and selection practices, and that it’s worth voicing these concerns, in my opinion. I’m adamant much of the afore-outlined culture of friendship is due to this. The impenetrable Oceanic clique is created by this. The lack of talent, in part, stems from this.

Or can be solved by addressing this.

If you’ve made it this far through my messily organised thoughts, then I firstly applaud your effort, and secondly thank you for your perseverance. This is an area I’m passionate about, and have previously been hesitant to comment on. As always, please feel free to contact me in whatever means possible to spark and generate discussion on this.