Building a gamified hiring funnel
Developing a custom, multi-level web game to filter out casual applicants and attract only those driven by pure curiosity.
LUN HR Brand
The hiring game that built a community
Marketing Design
2019
LUN already had a mythic, research-lab reputation among Kyiv’s tech universities and 86% brand awareness. We didn’t need standard recruitment ads to get more applications; we needed a filter to attract genuinely curious, technically exceptional people.
We made our internal culture public by developing a multi-level hiring game, building physical spaces for the tech community to gather, and working directly with academia to build the next generation of innovators.
1M+
Global coding game attempts
Viral metro banners linked to an online game. Beating every level unlocked our weekly parties.
86%99%
Target recognition
Successfully reached the entire target engineering community without relying on standard corporate job ads.
Lunoteka and Chytalka IT Hubs
Built two IT hubs on KNU campus, creating physical spaces that helped the local tech scene to connect and thrive.
Challenges
A/B testing the physical world
Placing raw code on physical metro banners to act as entry links to the game, allowing us to A/B test the HR brand's geo-efficiency across different stations.
Managing accidental viral scale
Keeping servers running and mobilizing our SMM team and colleagues to field a massive flood of game inquiries when a local Kyiv ad test unexpectedly exploded globally with over one million attempts.
Turning company culture into a physical community
Designing and building two major IT hubs and hosting events to give the Ukrainian tech industry actual physical spaces to gather outside of work.
Integrating with traditional academia
Navigating the heavy bureaucracy of a traditional institution (KNU University) to fundamentally change their curriculum and successfully open a brand-new Urbanist faculty.
Shout-out to my team!
- Alina Skalkina, Marketing Design
- Iryna Platonova, Chief People Officer
- Stas Sklyarovsky, CTO
- Volodymyr Kybitsky, AI Team
- Dmytro Satanovsky, AI Team
- Maksym Dolynchuk, Engineer