Accenture announces Malaysia’s first career fair in the metaverse, but it seems a bit basic

Thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, the metaverse is pretty trendy these days—whether or not it’s a good thing. It’s currently resulting in some pretty wild new concepts that seem a bit pointless, but then there are ideas like Accenture Malaysia’s first metaverse-based career fair in the country that could actually benefit the people. But how will Accenture’s Careerverse work, and how impressive is this “metaverse”?

According to Accenture, its “Careerverse” is a “webVR experience of how the firm will scout tech talents”. The platform is developed by EXR (Entropia Extended Reality)—a recent acquisition by Accenture Interactive which aims to bring AR, VR and MR technology to its client base.

Previously, Accenture used VR headsets to give Malaysian university students “an experiential glimpse of life in Accenture”. Today, Ramakrishnan C.N.—Managing Director Experience Architecture Lead, Accenture—says that the Careerverse’s “webVR” means that it is a virtual reality space that lets users access it with just a web browser and without VR goggles.

I’m not too convinced with them showing off that the Careerverse is something you can access “without VR goggles”. First of all, the metaverse concept has been around for about 30 years—and one of the closest things we had for the metaverse ideal is Second Life—an “online multimedia platform” launched in 2003. But even that game has countless flaws, and it has become sort of a wasteland… and a bit of a joke.

Both Second Life and the Careerverse work “without VR goggles”. However, Accenture stated that it can be accessed with just a web browser. That’s fair, but what is this Careerverse going to be like?

In a sneak preview of what the metaverse career fair would be like, Accenture showed us a demo video (which you can watch above). It’s basically a virtual room that you can move around in—and it reminds me of the halls of physical career fairs, just a lot emptier. There would be areas that you can find to do specific things like attend live keynotes and apply for available jobs.

“In the Accenture Careerverse, candidates will get to chat with recruiters live, interact with leaders from global tech giants such as Microsoft, Google, AWS, and SAP, and score a live interview with recruiters. It aims to recruit technology talent to help clients on their digital ambitions, especially in the retail and financial services sector,” said Accenture.

You might be thinking—how is this different from other virtual career fairs? Ramakrishnan stated that the Careerverse would be more “personalised” and “persistant”. When we asked what he meant by that, he said that “personalisation” meant that users are able to “log in their own details” and see things like “interview schedules and chat functions”.

As for what he meant by “persistent”, Ramakrishnan explained that it’s “when a user interacts” with links/videos, you’d still be able to find them easily for future reference. He added that it’s a bit like in a “real career fair” where “you hold on to brochures”. At the moment, he said that only certain features would be rolled out.

The Accenture Careerverse will run for one month, starting on 22 April 2022. They aim to hire 2000 tech talent in the next few years—“contributing to the MyDIGITAL ambition of creating 500,000 jobs in the digital economy”. In the long run, Accenture wants to have the ability to “collaborate seamlessly across extended reality environments”.

It might be a little too early to tell if this Careerverse will take off. For now, based on the preview we’ve seen, it seems a little bareboned. I also hope that using the term “metaverse” to create an interactive virtual job fair isn’t just riding on the gimmick—and that Accenture actually follows through with adding more features in the near future.

If you’re interested in the Careerverse, you can register for it here.

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