Why We Hired Esports Talent at Our Corporate Office

No, we’re not expanding horizontally into gaming here at ScheduleBase. Nor are we hiring a fluffy position to entertain our employees in the break room. And we don’t currently plan to sponsor an Esports team. However, we have found that Esports aficionados have some excellent skills for the workplace.

The global Esports market is exploding. Professional athletic teams are investing in them for marketing purposes. And from 2018’s market size of over $900 million, Esports is expected to reach $1.6 billion this year. Some colleges and universities even offer scholarships for their Esports teams. It’s fun, it’s engaging, and there is money in it for good players. A Fortnight event last year, for example, paid out $100 million to the top team. And more people watched the League of Legends World Championships than watched the Super Bowl.

One surprising impact of Esports is its rising influence in secondary education. Several larger city school districts have implemented Esports team programs for their students. The Dallas education board recently committed almost half a million dollars to jump-start a complete program that would support students interested in coaching, game development, and programming.

The results so far? Desirable qualities for any employee. Even if you aren’t hiring software engineers, we’ve seen a greater propensity for new hires with Esports experience to contribute these key attributes to our workplace:

1. Tactical thinkers: Game strategy demands minds trained in tactical thinking. As gameplay develops, participants are continually faced with challenges and brainstorming solutions to meet their objectives. We all know this happens in the corporate world, too, and thinking on your feet is a valuable trait in any organization.
2. Improved sociability: The stereotype of gamers and computer-oriented students describes them as shy and generally not as engaged in the social side of school life. In Dallas schools, 70% of the students who are now involved in the Esports program had no prior involvement in any extracurricular activities. For these people, being on a team helps feed their growing abilities and socializes them for career cooperation.
3. Programming Familiarity: Few jobs are free from some underlying coding. With lessons in coding and in playing, the programmer in our office understands the practical impact of his work and how it influences customers and users. Knowing both sides of a product is rare, but this newer addition to the team has both created a product and experienced how it is best used.
4. Better collaborators: Teamwork skills are desirable in nearly every position in the workplace, and the personal dynamics of any group endeavor take practice. New hires often need many months and ongoing coaching to partner effectively within and between departments. Our Esports athlete is young but already understands that he cannot work in isolation and still expect success.

With so much increased exposure in younger years, the benefits of Esports team participation has long-term benefits to companies that hire participants. Not every Esports athlete will win millions, but an early foray into the competitive online team sports will reward them with skills that will improve your business’s team strength and lead to strategic wins. GLHF. 

Author Profile Jon Forknell is the Vice President and General Manager of Atlas Business Solutions, Inc., a software marketing company specializing in employee scheduling software, including ScheduleBase employee scheduling software, and other business software solutions. In the past, Jon has been recognized by the U.S. Small Business Administration as a SBA Young Entrepreneur of the Year. Atlas Business Solutions was named as one of Software Magazine’s Top 500 Software Companies in 2004 through 2007, and 2010, 2013, 2014, 2016, 2017, and 2018.