$125K Job, No Degree or Experience Necessary

A hot startup called Knack has been getting lots of press attention, but much of the coverage has missed the most exciting potential of this firm, which is to help individuals succeed based on their innate abilities.

To put this in simpler terms, imagine a 20-year-old college dropout in Costa Rica who spends half an hour playing a game and two weeks later gets a $125,000 job offer because the game revealed his remarkable hidden talents.

That's the potential of having your unique strengths evident to all.

Yesterday I spoke at length with founder and CEO, Guy Halfteck, about the firm's aspirations. Knack currently has two games, Wasabi Waiter and Balloon Brigade, that he says identify and reveal each player's knacks, or strengths. Companies can use these games to identify potential or current employees who are most likely to succeed in certain positions.

Halfteck explained, "I look at Knack as a platform to connect people and companies. Everyone has a knack for something. For example, we might capture your knack for being expressive or a quick-thinker."

We are trying to level the playing field, and make success less dependent on your resume, what school you attended, or where you grew up. It should be more dependent on your innate abilities."

Knack's two games – a third is coming this winter – identify each player's strengths, which the company can then correlate with success profiles for different jobs, companies and industries. Halfteck says the games measure your raw skills and predict your potential. They don't care what you have accomplished in the world or how impressive your credentials might be.

Less focus on experience, more focus on potential?

Halfteck believes that, "The world will be shifting towards a greater focus on raw potential. Up until now, evaluation systems have not given companies the ability to measure raw skills. The science is very shaky. We aspire to give anyone the ability to be discovered for their raw potential, regardless of whether they speak English or attended a top school.

"To use an analogy," explains Halfteck, "our economy has long been dependent on raw energy resources; Knack is looking for human reserves of pure potential, to be able to help people signal to others and say: 'this is what I can do, this is my raw potential.'"

What to expect

Wasabi Waiter and Balloon Brigade are now available as games, but neither currently reveal the player's knacks to him or her. Sometime in December, the company hopes to release its Knack app, which will enable you to not only identify your own knacks, but also share them with others, and vice versa.

Halfteck says his firm is already getting paid by leading companies to assist in pre-hiring assessments. But this barely scrapes the surface of what I think is most exciting about the potential of this type of initiative to change how talent gets recognized.

Even if people are happy with their career direction, such "games" might change dramatically what each person can accomplish. If Knack has its way, you may someday get hired and promoted based on the game you played late at night, rather than because you waited three years and six months for a promotion.

Halfteck also envisions helping companies evaluate employees to guide who will work best with whom and which sales person can best serve which customers.

Imagine a different kind of future

Whether it is Knack or another firm, imagine what will happen once a game platform develops the capability to accurately assess your skills and correlate them with success in certain roles.

• Instead of wasting five years doing a job you hate, you may be able to quickly find a job at which you excel.
• Instead of working with people and teams who can't leverage your skills, you may work with those who welcome your skills, and vice versa.
• Instead of being frustrated while your business does one bad hire after another, imagine being able to find the perfect colleagues almost immediately.

Don't get me wrong. I don't believe that Knack has this all figured out, or that there is a silver bullet that will make everyone happy. But, under many circumstances, games have the potential to be a much better surrogate for your potential performance than any interview or "written" assessment. They gather much more data than either of these other approaches.

Halfteck admits, "We have a very big vision. I'm looking at a Web driven by extreme personalization and extreme understanding of people at a granular level. We want to reveal how the differences between us relate to the different outcomes in our lives."

The better we understand the differences that make each of us unique human beings, the closer we will be to bringing out the best in each person. Stay tuned.

If you want to hear more from me, just click the Follow button below. You can also download my free guides at Kasanoff.com, or read my book with Michael Hinshaw: Smart Customers, Stupid Companies. On Twitter, I'm @NowPossible.