What is role play in human resources and what does it evaluate

24 of March, 2025

Knowing whether a candidate is the right fit for a position can be a complex task. However, it’s crucial to ensure the best in personnel selection processes. In this regard, techniques like role play in HR can be very helpful.

You want to learn more about what is role play and its purpose? Here, we have all the necessary information and the details of this personnel selection strategy that is being increasingly used in more and more companies.

What is a role play

The role play in HR is a technique applied in team dynamics that includes group interviews. It consists of improvising real-life scenarios.

This HR role play is applied to different fields such as teaching or job interviews. It works as a group dynamic in which to practice certain skills relevant to the job.

Normally, during the different stages of the recruiting process, this is usually used after shortlisting the participants based on their resumes. It’s a role-playing game where the attention is focused on the candidates. It is carried out in groups.

Hence, the game consists of assigning different roles to different individuals and developing a specific situation or scenario, usually those that could occur in the day-to-day performance of each job.

Therefore, candidates must act in accordance with the HR role play assigned to show the skills they possess.

Steps to conduct an HR role play

Now that you know what role play is, it only remains to install it following the steps detailed below:

Greetings and explanation

The interviewer should welcome candidates once they enter and remain neutral from the get-go. It’s ideal to break the ice with some comments and take the initiative in the conversation. This creates a relaxed environment.

Then, you start to explain how the HR role play will unfold, highlighting the objectives of this type of group interview and how it will be carried out.

Preparation and execution

Thus, the person acting as the interviewer will allocate the different roles among the participants in the HR role play and will set a time limit for the conversation.

Once the roles are distributed, the dynamics that will be carried out by the candidates and the problem to solve are presented, giving a time limit to conclude the conversation. Throughout the entire simulation, the interviewer can intervene to energize the meeting if deemed necessary.

To evaluate an HR role play, different methods can be used, such as:

Observation: The evaluator watches the role play and notes the participant’s performance.
Feedback: From the evaluator to each participant about their performance.
Self-evaluation: The participant reflects on their own performance and assesses it.

Conclusion of the HR role play

The best way to conduct an interview is by ensuring that all individuals have played an active role within the game and have had the chance to prove their worth.

Ideally, you want to get feedback from the participants to know if they were comfortable, if it was helpful, and what can be improved. This way, each time an HR role play is done, the experience can be enhanced.

Evaluation

The interviewer and those from the HR team who have observed will assess the skills shown by each candidate and see who best fits the needs of the company.

The evaluation of a role play is an important tool to provide feedback to the participant and help them improve their vocational skills.

Tips for conducting an HR role play

Once completed, here are some tips for evaluating a role play effectively:

Set clear objectives: Before evaluating an HR role play, it’s essential to set clear objectives. This will help ensure that the evaluation is relevant and effective.
Use appropriate evaluation methods: The evaluation method used should be appropriate for the objective. HR software like Sesame facilitates this process.
Be objective: in the evaluation to avoid personal bias.
Provide constructive feedback: to help the individual improve their skills and showcase them.

By following these tips, you can ensure an effective evaluation of an HR role play that will help the participant enhance their skills.

What assesses a role play in human resources

In an HR role play, the following aspects listed below are evaluated:

Understanding of the role: each participant must understand the role they’ve been assigned and be able to act accordingly.
Internal communication: the candidates must have the ability to communicate clearly and effectively with the other participants.
Problem-solving creatively and effectively.
The ability to work effectively as a team with the other participants to achieve a common goal.
Each individual’s interpersonal skills. They must be able to interact effectively with the other participants, showing empathy, respect, and assertiveness.

Aside from these general aspects, other specific aspects can be evaluated depending on the objective of the HR role play to ensure the right person is chosen.

For example, in a role play that is used to evaluate sales skills, you could assess the participant’s ability to present a product or service attractively and convincingly.

Interesting, right? The role play in HR is a modality increasingly employed by companies. Discover everything about this and other HR software topics in our blog where we have multiple guides and articles. We look forward to seeing you!

Professional with over 20 years of extensive experience in various areas of Human Resources (Recruitment, Training, Occupational Risk Prevention, and Personnel Management). Experience in the Management Department: Broad understanding of the company and HR.

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cristinamartin

HR Content Specialist