Forbes Spotlights Game Developed by Steve Robinson '04

March 10, 2016

A game developed by Steve Robinson, a 2004 graduate of DePauw University, is featured in Forbes.  His creation, Jobstacles, is described as "an Apples to Apples style card game that compels you and up to eight friends to choose the best (or, more often, the worst) person for the job."

"I was in the midst of a very tough interview last spring, where the interviewer was questioning my fit for the opened position," Robinson tells the publication. "I remember thinking this felt very much like a game. I would need to convince this person that despite what she thought from looking at my resume, I was still the best candidate for the job. When I returned home, I began scrolling down on a piece of paper all these funny characteristics that may make a person a bad candidate for one job, but a solid candidate for another, and that became my inspiration."

Lauren Orsini writes, "In Jobstacles, each player has three 'Jobstacles' cards in her hand which list applicant characteristics, and three 'occupation' cards. When the player acting as the 'job interviewer' draws an occupation card at random, that becomes the position the other characters apply for. Let’s say it is Television Evangelist. In this case, a 'Jobstacle' like 'can’t stop sharing their political and religious views with coworkers' is suddenly a perk!"

Read more at the magazine's website.

A history major and Management Fellow at DePauw, Stephen J. Robinson earned an M.B.A. from Northwestern University's Kellogg School of Management.  He's worked for  several game companies, including Mattel and Fisher-Price, where he was marketing manager.

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