Hire or Fire
Hire or Fire Rulebook
Table of Contents
Table of Contents
Components
- 270 cards: 180 jobs and 90 Skills (1 Strength and 1 Weakness per card)
- 18 compensation payments of $500
- 24 bonuses of $4,500 each
- 1 filing box, called discard pile P (like "Paper bin")
- 6 dream job tokens (1 per color)
- 24 Expected Salary cards (4 per color) with values of $3,000, $4,000, $5,000, and $6,000
Career kits in 6 different colors, each consisting of:
- 1 job board
- 1 HIRED! token
- 1 dream job token
- 4 Expected Salaries
Also: 6 application folders (all identical).
Setup
First prepare the general game materials: shuffle the job cards and place them face down in a stack; do the same with the skills cards. Also place the bonuses and the compensation payments within reach. Put the discard pile P (Paper bin) in the middle of the table.
Then each of you puts together a career kit in the color of your choice: take the 4 Expected Salary cards, 1 job board, 1 dream job token, and 1 HIRED! token in the same color. Each of you also needs 1 application folder.
Assemble your job board and place it in front of you. Then each of you takes 6 jobs and 6 skill cards into your hand. Look at them without letting the others see them. Put any extra career kits back into the box, you will not need them in this game.
Game Flow
Hire or Fire? is played over 4 rounds, representing 4 weeks. In each week, you advertise a job and look for the best candidate for it. In addition, you also apply for another vacancy—namely, your dream job of the week. There is no turn order, because everyone plays simultaneously.
A Week at a Glance
I The Dream Job
In each round, you receive a job offer from someone in your group that you must apply for—you want to land this dream job!
Place the dream job token lying in front of you in front of the job board of the person to your left. In the first week, this is your own token; in the following weeks, it is the one you applied for the previous week. The token is always visible to everyone.
The dream job placed in front of you in this way determines whose job posting you will apply for this week (recognizable by the color and the symbol on the token).
Note: If, during the course of the game, you get your own dream job token back, simply pass it one more time to the left.
II The Job Offer
But first, of course, you have to decide what exactly your job offer for someone else is. Choose a job from your hand and place it on your job board. Everyone must be able to see it clearly. The person who has your dream job token (in your color) in front of them must apply for this job offer.
By the way: For readability, we decided to put only one gender on each card. So you will find job titles on the job cards that are in feminine form as well masculine form. But the applicants sought are always male, female, and non-binary!
Once per week, at any point in time, you have the option of exchanging up to 2 cards from your hand. You can decide whether they are both of one card type or from both types. However, you must always draw the same type that you discarded. The exchanged cards go to paper bin.
Example: The pink player must apply for the brown player's job vacancy because her brown dream job token is lying in front of him. This means: the dream job she is about to apply for is a waterslide tester. The blue player wants to become a crime scene cleaner, the yellow player wants to become a ticket inspector, and the brown player wants to become a traffic jam researcher.
III The Application
It is time to show yourselves from your very best side: put together your applications for your dream job! Try to present yourselves in the best possible light. So choose cards that match your dream job.
The dream job token lying in front of you shows you which person is providing your dream job this week. A glance at their job board shows you exactly which job it is. Each of you takes an application folder and fills all of its spaces with cards:
Job: Your expertise did not come out of nowhere: you have done this job before. You can use each job only once per game. So choose carefully which one you want to use for your application and which ones for your job offer. Insert jobs face up into the designated spaces in the folder.
Skills: Each skill card contains one strength and one weakness. Every card you use in an application is discarded at the end of the week. So read the strength and the weakness on a skill card carefully before deciding to use one of them in your application. After the week, neither of them will be available to you anymore, and they go to discard pile P. Insert skills face up into the designated spaces in the folder.
Strength: Everyone is good at something! So this, more or less, is the best quality you have to offer.
Weakness: This is your ... let's say "unfavorable" side. But don't despair: every weakness can definitely be turned into a surprising advantage.
Expected Salary: This is how much you want to earn in your new job. You can use each Expected Salary card only once per game. So decide carefully how much the dream job of the week is worth to you. The more confident you are that you'll get the job (because the candidate is such a good fit), the higher you should set your expected salary. Insert the Expected Salary card face down into the designated compartment.
Example: The blue player wants to become a crime scene cleaner. Previously, she was a chimney sweep. That's why she knows all about dirty places. Her strength is that she is very flexible. This allows it to reach even the hardest-to-reach places. Her weakness is that she shakes violently all the time. But that pretty much takes care of the dusting. She inserts these 3 cards face up into the designated compartments. She hopes for a salary of $6000 and is very sure that she will get her dream job immediately. She turns this card over and inserts it into the corresponding compartment.
Important: Make sure others cannot see your cards or the contents of your application.
As soon as you are satisfied with your application, close it and place it in the middle of the table. Once all applications are on the table, move on to the next phase.
IV The Applicants
Now the applicants of the week are introduced.
Whoever placed their own application in the middle of the table first gets to present all the applications for this week: take all folders from the middle of the table and shuffle them thoroughly. Make sure they are all aligned the same way. No one should be able to trace which application belongs to whom.
It is important that you present all the applications for this week neutrally. So, make sure you present your own application in exactly the same way as all the others. No one should be able to guess from your presentation which application is yours. After you make the presentation, lay out all the application folders face up on the table.
V The Hiring Decision
You now know which applicants the market currently has to offer. Now you want to find the person who applied for your job offer!
Once you have decided who should get your job, take the HIRED! token in your color in your hand and hold it up. As soon as everyone is ready, it begins. Whoever presented the applications now counts down aloud: 3, 2, 1 - HIRED! At the sound of HIRED!, everyone simultaneously places their HIRED! token on the application that impressed them the most.
Starting with the person who presented the applications, you now reveal in turn whether your application was successful. To do so, when it is your turn, take the folder you created back to yourself and announce whether your application was chosen by your dream job hirer. Turn over the Expected Salary card in the folder.
By the way: this is also a good moment to explain your own, sometimes misunderstood, application ambitions once again.
Then check which case has occurred:
Is the HIRED! token on your application the same color as your dream job? It's a match! You get your dream job and your Expected Salary is paid out to you. Take the card out of the folder and place it face up in front of you. The person who placed the color-matching HIRED! Token on your application (i.e. gave you the dream job) has delivered an excellent headhunter performance and therefore receives a bonus worth $4,500 because they hired you.
Everyone else who may have placed a HIRED! token on your application goes away empty-handed.
Does your application only have HIRED! Token in colors other than your dream job? Well. Apparently you were not quite that convincing. But at least you would have gotten some job! Take a compensation payment worth $500 and place this little consolation prize in front of you. However, the persons who wanted to hire you, get nothing.
Note: You can never receive more than one compensation per week, even if there are several jobs you could have gotten. If you ever run out of compensation payments, please use alternative materials. They are not limited.
Is there no HIRED! token at all on your application? We'd better leave that uncommented. You get nothing. That was a flop.
VI Everyone Loves Tidying Up
Remove all jobs and skills from your folder. If you did not receive a dream job this week, also remove your Expected Salary card. (If you got your dream job, your Expected Salary card is already lying on the table in front of you, where it remains). Lastly, also take the job from your job board. Throw all of these cards into the document shredder ... uh, into discard pile P. They do not return to the game.
Note: All bonuses, expected salary cards, and compensation payments you earn over the course of the game remain on the table in front of you.
You now once again have an empty application folder in your hand for the next week. Because: new week – new luck.
Draw cards so that you once again have 6 jobs and 6 skills in your hand. Start a new week following the same principles.
End of the Game
After 4 weeks, the game ends. Then add up all your expected salary cards lying in front of you (between $3,000 and $6,000 depending on the card), bonuses ($4,500 each), and compensation payments ($500 each).
Whoever has earned the most money wins. In the event of a tie, the player who received most bonuses wins. If there is still a tie after that, the tied player with the most compensation payments wins.