Department of State: Recruiting with multimedia

Interactivity creates an experience that should both interest and engage potential recruits.

The Site

The US Department of State’s large careers site has within it a section for potential Foreign Service Officers. This includes Assignment Abroad, a set of scenarios that lets potential recruits find out what sort of work they might be expected to do.

The multimedia version is driven by Flash, though there is also a ‘text-only experience’. You are first asked to choose a career track: consular, economic, management, political or public diplomacy. Each sequence starts with the same background description, of Alva City in Vendurasaca. The story then follows a diplomat on the different tracks with the same event – an earthquake – shaking their worlds in various ways. Each page ends with a choice of decisions – a different follow-up page is loaded depending on the choice. For example, the economic officer has to decide whether to investigate damage to the infrastructure or the effect on US companies and, depending on the choice, may end up investigating the effect on the privatisation programme. There is no conclusion: after four pages, each story simply stops with an offer to ‘play again’.

According to the introduction, Assignment Abroad is designed to provide “a better understanding of the work and lifestyle of US Foreign Service Officers. We also hope it will help you become familiar with the wide variety of career choices.”

The Takeaway

This site uses the most basic ability of the web, interactivity, to create an experience that should both engage and educate potential staff. The idea of using the same background story for each ‘track’ is an interesting one that would be hard to reproduce in any other medium. There may be only two choices on each of four pages, but that means – if our maths is right – that 31 different pages have to be created for each career.

There must have been a temptation to turn this into a game, but the more factual approach means the scenarios can be kept more realistic, and thus useful. The multimedia version is carefully created (the diplomatic briefcase shakes during the quake), and is more appealing. However, the provision of a text alternative is sensible both for people with disabilities, and for those whose computers or internet connections would be challenged by the Flash version.

While an interactive story board like this may most obviously used in recruitment areas, a little imagination could surely adapt it for other roles – marketing, perhaps?

First published on 15 September, 2005