What the HireVue games are
HireVue games are short puzzle and people-skills games that some employers add to the HireVue screen. Each game takes about 3 minutes. A full set takes 7 to 20 minutes, and HireVue says to set aside 30.
HireVue says the games measure three things: your personality and work style, how you work with people, and how you work with information. The games get harder or easier as you play, based on how you are doing. They are scored with AI.
You play in a browser on a computer or in the HireVue for Candidates app on a phone. Each game starts with an instruction video. You can see your level and the time left, and you can pause and replay the instructions.
The games, one by one
HireVue does not list its current games by name. These names come from research HireVue helped publish in 2023 and from HireVue’s own announcement of its people-skills games:
- Numerosity (about 3 minutes). Mental math. Pick numbers that add, subtract, multiply, or divide to hit a target.
- Shapedance (about 3 minutes). Find the shapes that match after they have been turned.
- Pathfinder (about 5 minutes). Move pieces to build a path from one end to the other.
- Singularity (about 3 minutes). Find the one shape that is different among more and more look-alikes.
- E-Motions. Watch 3 to 5 second clips of faces and name the emotion: anger, fear, disgust, happiness, surprise, or sadness.
- TeamChat and LeaderChat. Answer chat messages from coworkers in a work situation, the way you would at work.
Prep sites also list Flashback (remember a shape), Digitspan (remember numbers and letters in order), Puzzle Picture (rebuild an image), and PortraitXT (a work-style questionnaire). Your employer picks which games you get, so read the list on your invite.
A balloon game you may read about online belongs to a different company’s test (pymetrics, now part of Harver). No HireVue source lists it.
How to prepare
HireVue offers no practice set for the games, and it says it does not work with any company that sells game prep. Each game starts with easy levels so you can learn it as you go. What helps:
- Sleep and timing. Play when you are rested, not late at night after a shift.
- A quiet room and a steady connection. If the connection drops, HireVue saves your progress, but a calm room keeps your focus.
- The right device. HireVue says display problems are most common in Chrome or Edge on slower Windows computers. Try the phone app, Firefox, or Safari if the games look wrong.
- Watch every instruction video. The rules are simple, but each game has one twist that the video explains.
- Answer the people games as yourself. The chat and emotion games are about how you work with people. Pick what you would really do.
The video questions that usually come with the games
Most invites that include games also include recorded video questions, and those are the part you can practice. Expect 3 to 8 questions with about 30 seconds to think and 1 to 3 minutes to answer. See HireVue interview questions and the timing guide.
Some employers also add the Virtual Job Tryout, a job simulation that came from Modern Hire. See the Modern Hire guide.