When some Walmart Inc. WMT 0.35% store workers want to apply for a higher-paying management role, the company fits them with a $250 virtual reality headset to see if they are the right candidate for the job.
The country’s largest private employer is using a VR skills assessment as part of the selection process to find new middle managers, watching how workers respond in virtual reality to an angry shopper, a messy aisle or an underperforming worker.
The assessment yields a color-coded report for hiring managers that describes strengths and weaknesses—perhaps weak leadership skills, but strong knowledge of the fresh produce department—that can help determine promotion decisions or the need for additional training, said Mr. Holler.
As Walmart begins to use VR to evaluate workers, it can use the data to identify how certain traits correlate with performance, said Jeremy Bailenson, founding director of Stanford University’s Virtual Human Interaction Lab and co-founder of Strivr, a Menlo Park, Calif.-based company that designed Walmart’s virtual reality training.
Walmart managers completed real-life performance assessments for hundreds of candidates that took early VR evaluations to verify accuracy and build the first iteration of the algorithm that scores workers, he said.
