Tech start-up uses Portal 2 mod as recruitment tool

San Francisco-based tech start-up company WibiData is using a mod of Portal 2 to recruit potential employees, The New York Times reports.

When readers visit WibiData's jobs page, they are greeted with the Portal 2 mod accompanied by the following message:

"At WibiData, tackling tough puzzles is part of the job. We also enjoy solving a good puzzle in our free time, too. Does your brain work like ours? Check out our puzzles, and apply for a job if you're up for the challenge."

The Portal 2 mod challenges players to find the CEO's lost PIN by venturing into five fictional test chambers that are located under the WibiData office. Here, they must solve puzzles within the first-person puzzler. While applicants do not necessarily need to complete all the levels in the game in order to apply for a job with WibiData, the company's CEO Christophe Bisciglia said that the problem solving required when playing Portal 2 is not too different from the skills required to work at WibiData.

"It makes me feel like I exercise the same part of my brain that programming and problem-solving does," he said in an interview with The New York Times.

Bisciglia says that the idea to use the game as a recruiting tool came after he saw the mods of Doug Hoogland, who created a mod of Portal 2 that was used as a wedding proposal. Hoogland was invited to recreate WibiData's office in the mod, adding non-existent test chambers beneath the office.

"I think a lot of people will think, 'That's really cool that they created a video game to recruit people. I want to work there," Bisciglia says.