How a chemical company uses VR to attract new trainees
Specialty chemical supplier BYK has great conditions and opportunities but finding apprentices is hard. VRdirect is helping them recruit.
The shortage of skilled workers and personnel has Germany in its grip. For years, the number of trainees has been steadily declining. Although the chemical industry offers excellent career opportunities in numerous professions, it is becoming more challenging for companies to find new trainees every year.
If you want to be seen alongside Instagram, TikTok, and company, you also have to develop technologically, above all. This is where virtual reality comes into play.
Get to know the job of a coatings lab technician at BYK in VR
BYK, which is part of the ALTANA Group, is particularly urgently looking for new paint lab assistants. However, it is difficult to convey in words and pictures alone why this is a great job.
Paint? It stinks and is toxic. Lab coat? Boring. The application process fails before it even starts.
BYK is sure that if young people were to visit the lab for a day, they would be thrilled by the many different tasks and the great working atmosphere. It is precisely this "aha" moment that BYK can now convey in virtual reality and thus everywhere: in schools, at trade fairs or on the web. With a VR headset, young people can virtually stand in the lab as if they were there.
VR is like a personal visit on site
Prospective trainees decide for themselves where to look and which details to pay attention to. Thanks to the 360-degree all-round view, their impression is much more personal than with typical job presentation videos.
What's a job like that like in specialty chemicals? With VR, prospective trainees can take a look directly at the lab in advance.
In the VR experience "Coatings Lab Technician@BYK" from VRdirect, they walk through the various lab rooms and receive information about the training directly from their future colleagues. They meet them virtually in real size and at eye level.
In this way, they store the VR lab excursion as their own experience, instead of as a dull informational talk in the career information center or at the trade fair booth. This remains in their memory and is passed on to others.
"VRdirect allows us to present our apprenticeship professions in a completely new way and make everyday training and working life even more tangible for students," says Christine Thannheiser-Rumpf, Head of Training and Development at BYK.
Effective and fast VR projects with VRdirect
BYK implemented the VR recruiting experience with VRdirect's VR platform. It supports many devices, from VR headsets to smartphones. Users can put together interactive VR experiences with text, images, video, and 360 footage using drag-and-drop. They do not need any programming knowledge.
For the chemical specialists, the first apprentice app was a successful pilot project to get to know the new technology. Now it is being followed by the Metaverse. BYK wants to use VR for more career ideas and in other parts of the company, such as for training and education.
"Especially in view of the increasing importance of the Metaverse, it is also becoming more and more important for BYK to use innovative technologies such as virtual reality for itself. With VRdirect, we are mastering the virtual reality entry and will be able to exploit the immersive potential of VR throughout the company in the future," says Christian Schüring, Project Manager for VR, AR and MR at BYK.
More information about the VR platform VRdirect is available on the official website. Want to test VRdirect? In the VRdirect WebStudio, you have free access to the most important tools for your first VR project. The software runs directly in the browser and you can publish the finished app for the web, smartphones, and common VR headsets.
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