Recruiting Gets a New Life Online

The Vancouver Police Department turned to virtual reality recruiting to attract savvy young recruits. The results gained worldwide attention. Here's how they did it.

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Toting Up The Costs

When toting up the numbers on the VPD's virtual recruiting seminar, it's amazing how little it cost.

Start-up funds, paid by McQuiggin himself, came to $120; grants for the two grad students on the project totalled $1500; props, consisting of a police dog, vehicles and a horse, came in at $10; and the production of an 'in-world' video of the seminar cost $500. The only additional cost was a moderate amount of staff time, amounting to about four person-weeks.

"We had little niceties that were quite inexpensive. For example we were able to buy a police dog for only about three dollars. He was a German shepherd, which was great," said McQuiggin. "You can put scripting behind objects in Second Life, so we were able to make him do things like sit and roll over. We even put a little police jacket on him." Best of all, no need to pick up after him.

The Good, The Bad And The Ugly

CIOs thinking of putting Second Life to work for their own organization should be aware that there are many pros and cons to doing business in the virtual world. Just ask virtual real estate millionaire Anshe Chung, who was subjected to a cyber assault of flying penises by "griefers", Second Life baddies who like to attack their targets with "griefspawn", a program code that generates self-replicating objects.

"It's a developing technology on the hacker's side, but there are reasonable steps you can take to protect your organization against the vast majority of people who want to do bad things," said VPD's Inspector Kevin McQuiggin.

"You can certainly restrict access if you own land and secondly, you can turn off scripting for unknown users on your parcel of land." Much of the time, organizations targeted by griefers are those that are perceived as unwelcome by the community, noted Joanna Robinson of the Masters of Digital Media program.

"But businesses that want to go onto Second Life shouldn't be concerned," she noted. "If they learn enough about how to control their land they can be completely safe from people they don't want to be there. The only time you need to worry is if you do indeed leave everything open [in which case] anyone can build, anyone can script, anyone can do anything.

That's when you run the risk." In fact Robinson believes that there are a lot of real-life opportunities for businesses in Second Life, because it's so open. "It depends on what kind of business you're in and what you bring to it," she said. "You decide what you want to do in this space. It's entirely customizable for your needs. You can make yourself look however you want, and you can make your space function however you want -- it doesn't have to be a replica of your real life building; it can be anything."