When I logged onto Roblox’s platform to take the company’s preselection assessment for entry-level candidates, I was instructed to design a factory workflow that would maximize returns in a toy factory. (For the millennials out there, it was like a high-tech Lemonade Stand.)

As I pulled virtual levers to build cars, robots, and playsets, I watched the returns trend frustratingly down and figured I probably didn’t have the chops to get hired at the video game company. But only probably—it wasn’t entirely clear what skills I was being tested on or how they related to software creation.

Though some employers rely only on coding assessments to evaluate early career candidates for computer science positions, Roblox has taken a different approach. Jack Buckley, Roblox’s VP of people science, said it’s designed to test how candidates think, not just what coding languages they know. (Don’t worry—applicants also take a coding test.) Applicants’ approach to the factory assessment, for example, gauges their aptitude for systems thinking, one of Roblox’s 15 critical skills.

The gamified test takes a lot of work to create—even for a company like Roblox that’s known for building virtual worlds. Here’s why Roblox went to all the trouble.

White out. The video game industry—and tech as a whole—is not very diverse. Though 45% of gamers are women, only 24% of employees were female as of 2022, and just 2% were Black as of 2021. Coding tests can perpetuate these trends: If underrepresented groups are not told to study STEM in school, they may not have coding skills, but that doesn’t mean they don’t have the aptitude to learn. Roblox wanted to design a test that screened for the latter group. Keep reading here.—SV

Do you work in HR or have information about your HR department we should know? Email [email protected]. For completely confidential conversations, ask Susanna for her number on Signal.

After years spent shouting “show me the money,” Jerry Maguire style, US employees are increasingly getting the pay transparency they crave. At the same time, questions around executive compensation are on the rise, CFO Brew’s Kristen Talman reports.

In recent years, executive pay metrics have caught the attention of wider audiences, especially the CEO-to-typical-worker pay ratio. The ratio was 399-to-1 in 2021, a figure that showed executive compensation rose 1,460% from 1978 and typical-worker compensation by 18.1%, the Economic Policy Institute (EPI) found. The discrepancy is a “contributor to rising inequality,” which, if left unattended, can cause wider economic damage, according to the EPI report.

Compensation committees carefully consider (say that five times fast) CFO salaries because of the potential implications for succession planning, according to proxy firm Institutional Shareholder Services. The firm noted that finance chiefs are often “first in line for internal promotions to the CEO position,” so compensation committees want to ensure that large salary differentials do not exist between CEO and CFO pay.

Keep reading on CFO Brew.—KT

Prognosticators of all stripes have been banging the recession drum for what seems like forever. The warnings from experts have grown louder as the curtain rises on 2023: International Monetary Fund Chief Kristalina Georgieva predicted earlier this month that one-third of the global economy should expect a recession to hit at some point this year.

If the economic sages are correct this time, leaders and their HR teams should prepare to batten down the hatches and brace themselves for turbulence—and potential layoffs.

When asked whether they’re preparing for a looming recession, 48% of HR Brew readers answered yes. A further 27% answered “not yet, but we might soon,” and 25% answered no.

With layoffs already tearing through the tech industry at an alarming clip, HR teams might fear that their teams could be part of the next wave of downsizing. And recruiters might wonder how to show just how indispensable they are, even when hiring slows.—SB

Today’s top HR reads.

Stat: Inflation slowed to 6.5% in December. (CNBC)

Quote: “What we’re seeing is an effort to try to relate changes in the way work is done to historical paradigm.”—Joseph Fuller, a Harvard business professor, on the emergence of new workplace terminology (Vox)

Read: Remote workers are going to extreme and somewhat comedic lengths to simulate productivity amid monitoring from bosses. (the Wall Street Journal)

Learn: Is getting a promotion part of your New Year's resolutions? The Brew’s Leadership Accelerator can help you get there – and we’re kicking off this 8-week program on January 23. Apply now.