What if letting people play together in virtual reality helps you better understand how they will work together? That’s the idea behind AlignVR, an Edmonton company founded by Alex and Nathaniel Rossol after some fun and games led to an unexpected insight.
When the brothers started a virtual reality escape room company called vrCAVE in 2016, they noticed something about the teams that were coming.
“As we watched lots and lots of groups go through our VR escape rooms during our testing, we started to see a pattern,” Alex Rosol said on Episode 22 of Bloom, Taproot’s innovation podcast. “Shortly after a group entered, within the first five or 10 minutes, it was clear whether or not this team was going to make it through the entire VR escape room experience.”
The Rossols began using VR as part of their own recruitment process, giving groups short puzzles and observing the “social clashes” that resulted from their efforts to solve them.
Then Airbus came calling looking for recruiting expertise, those discussions led to experiments in using VR as a recruiting tool, and soon a company born in the B2C entertainment space found a major B2B opportunity. Rossol is now eager to introduce more business leaders and HR professionals in Edmonton to the services AlignVR can offer.
Learn more about AlignVR’s story in the July 14 episode.
In our sponsor slot, you’ll hear Darrell Petras, director of business and community development at Innovate Edmonton, in conversation with Taproot co-founder Mac Male.
Bloom is available on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, Stitcher and wherever else you get your podcasts.
Photo: A team works together in virtual reality to solve an escape room puzzle. (AlignVR)
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