Recruitment software business Weirdly has been crowned the winner of Inside Retail and MI Academy’s Retail Hack Games for 2021. 

Five finalists battled it out on Friday to pitch a solution that would enhance the experience of human touch with the use of technology, but it was Weirdly’s idea to turn unsuccessful interview candidates into brand ambassadors that caught the judges’ attention. 

“Technology is dehumanising the recruitment experience and the recruitment experience is at its core, an interaction between one human being and another human being,” Mark Lulham, from Valiram and representing Team Weirdly, explained. 

With approximately 10,000 candidates rejected every year, Weirdly devised a solution that would invest in those people who are already showing interest in the company and prevent them from becoming “lost opportunities”.

Through a modular touchpoint manager that integrates with social media platforms, brands can speak to those contacts and use branded educational tools and gamification to grow their skill sets and “fill those gaps that made them unsuccessful today into successful people tomorrow”.

“It’s speaking to candidates, specifically where they are,” he said. 

“Ultimately, we want to convert 10,000 unsuccessful applicants into brand ambassadors … 

we convert them into employees and into customers. So, recruitment moves from being an expense, into a revenue generator.”

People’s Choice

Omnichannel marketing automation platform Dotdigital took home the People’s Choice award for the third year, with its pitch for a social impact platform. 

The gamification tool calculates shoppers’ social impact through their purchases using a Humanity Promoter Score and allows them to earn prizes for high scores. 

“The future of the world is in our hands and our hands are in social media,” Grant Inches explained. 

The social media platform would focus on 18 to 35 year olds, a key demographic that wants to take action against social issues.

“Social Justice allows you to bring together all your purchases, measuring the impact across sustainability, ethical and other important movements such as gender equality, veganism and Black Lives Matter, also giving you a true visibility of their entire supply chain before you purchase through the introduction of smart tags,” he said.  

“You’ll be able to follow what is truly important to you and hold your friends, family and businesses to account through the Humanity Promoter Score.”

Each product would feature a smart tag which customers can scan for more information and when passing a product, a notification would come up on their phone alerting them to the item. Businesses could also use the data given to them by the Social Justice app for EDMs and social media to communicate with customers at a level that aligns with their values. 

On entering a store, shop clerks would be sent a push notification about the customer, informing them of the social issues that are important to them and any potential products the customer might be interested in.

Judge Carlotta Criel praised the idea, saying it encapsulates what the next generation of consumers are looking for. 

“When we look at the next generation of consumers … and what they care about, social justice is one of the main points. They want to shop with ethical brands, they care about what brands stand for, they want to know where their products are coming from. It’s leaning towards SMBs over larger retail stores, so this is awesome,” she said. 

AI and machine learning were recurring themes in the Retail Hack Games this year. Team Shopexp put forward a pitch that uses AI to inform in-store team members of the online activity of shoppers to drive purchases of abandoned cart items. Meanwhile, Omneo suggested an app that plugs into e-commerce stores that allows shoppers to ask questions to other shoppers on the site. Similarly Schneider Electric pitched a platform that allows shoppers to become brand ambassadors, earning discounts by advising other shoppers about items ahead of purchase. 

Victorian software company Airwallex put forward an idea to revolutionise reviews to make them more personalised and relatable by rewarding customers for reviewing products and using AI and machine learning to group reviews based on like-minded people.