Assessment Centres
Essentially, assessment centres are group-based exercises which seek to examine how candidates will behave in group and team situations in the workplace. They are a fairly common means of selecting people at all levels within an organisation, and are also used for staff development purposes. They are usually left until the final stage of the recruitment process because they are expensive to run. Then why run them? Organisations are turning to assessment centres for graduate recruitment because they are the best method presently available for predicting how well people will perform at work.
Assessment centres are designed to assess candidates’ aptitude for a role, or perhaps provide a basis for personal development. Irrespective of the purpose, they have the following characteristics:
- They involve a group of participants in graduate recruitment activity, between four and eight is best, with a realistic minimum of four candidates for each job available or in each group.
- The candidates are assessed by a group of trained assessors, none of whom is individually responsible for the final decision on any particular candidate. All of the information is shared in a final session, where consensus decisions are reached on all candidates.
- The candidates undertake a number of assessment ‘instruments’ (eg. group exercises, presentations, in-tray exercises and role-plays), normally over a lengthy period (between one and four days, with a typical centre being two days long).
- Each candidate is assessed against a number of pre-defined, objective, job-related behavioural scales or competencies.
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