Biborg: If you want to work here, come play with us

Biborg is interviewing for its new back-end developer with an online game and a Discord bot.

If you’re not into Discord, you’re unlikely to fit into gaming and entertainment agency, Biborg’s culture. Discord is a free VoIP platform designed for gamers to connect and chat easily. If you’re into the things that Biborg works on, you know about Discord.

Biborg had been looking for a new back-end developer with little success when it realised it could streamline the search. Now it has a very unusual but, the agency believes, very efficient hiring process – a new recruitment method where “you are the hero” that’s geared to draw in just the kind of applicants Biborg is looking for and gives them a chance to plunge into the agency’s universe. Using one of Discord’s key features, its conversational bot, Biborg has created a narrative space adventure to conduct HR interviews with potential candidates. Each candidate answers questions put forward by the bot during the adventure, allowing the agency to get to know the candidate, and vice versa.

“At Biborg, the role of a developer is quite versatile: creating and maintaining production tools, development online and offline experiences with a strong visual component. We’re also working on real-time 3D rendering technologies so R&D is very important,” explained Laure Choisne, HR manager at Biborg. “We’re constantly striving to offer the highest level of visual quality, the most original or innovative experience while adapting to the widest possible range of devices.”

“Generally speaking, the profiles that interest us the most are those that combine technical and artistic skills. Our productions must be visually qualitative, striking and original, but they must be deployed in a relatively complex technical ecosystem,” added Alain Puget, managing director of Biborg Nantes.

“By launching this HR bot on Discord, a gaming platform that offers good prospects for innovation, we are looking to interact with back-end developers in an innovative way and in accordance with our very ‘playful’ DNA,” noted Bruno Luriot, chief executive officer of Biborg.

The bot invited candidates into The BackEnd Developer’s Quest, a space fantasy adventure with the mission of getting your CV into the hands of Biborg. Each interested back-end developer completes the quest by answering the questions generated by the bot. The zany space adventure is nerd heaven, taking users through a journey across the four corners of the universe. The conversation also gives the agency a chance to present itself, its teams, projects and daily environment through emojis and memes. The candidates, in turn, can answer more technical questions about their background and share their areas of expertise.

“For the first set of HR interviews on Discord, we chose a universe that is near and dear to us – space fantasy,” Puget continued. “It reflects our state of mind and our daily life, immersed in the entertainment industry, for which we develop technology using expertise that only we can offer. It’s not a myth – developers are drawn to technological innovations, video games, scientific literature, which gives us the chance to integrate references we share: Star Wars, Game Of Thrones, Back to the Future, The Lord of the Rings, Zero Wings, etc. So many fun worlds that will speak to future candidates and make them want to join Biborg.”