Designing of an Assessment Center

Use your resources to get started. An assessment centre can be designed around one or more vacancies in a company. Once you have completed a specific job description, interview your existing team to see what they feel are the competences, attributes and skills required to fill the position. When the answers have been compiled, create a list of adjectives to describe the characteristics that are essential to the role. This list will form the critiquing criteria for judging the suitability of each individual who participates in the event. Choose an assessment panel and plan your strategy with care. Choose an assessment panel and plan your strategy with care. You will require a panel to assist you in selecting the best applicants from the assessment. Its important to include all members of the panel in the design of the assessment centre, so that they clearly understand the roles they will need to play on the day of the assessment. They will also need to be clear about the target candidate, as the assessment group may be split at times, and you will wish to achieve consistent marking across the centre. A good way to achieve consistent marking is to design a form that enables each panel member to score each applicant from 1 to 10 (10 being perfect) against each of the desirable characteristics that you have agreed upon. Adding all the points together will identify the highest scoring applicants, who can then be selected for further interviews. Make sure that your venue is suitable. Its vital to hold a dress rehearsal or at least make a thorough appraisal well before the event to ensure that the space you plan to use is sufficient to run the assessment efficiently. Bear in mind that you will need a large open area for group exercises and a private office for presentations and/or testing. If its difficult to accommodate these requirements on your own premises, it will be better to hold the event at a local serviced office or hotel where adequate conference rooms and support facilities are available. This will also have the advantage of staff on hand to help with ushering and serving coffee and lunch. Organise everything well in advance of the event. Before you go live with the assessment centre its worth role-playing the event, because this will help you to identify potential improvements and problem areas, and fine-tune the timing of the exercises to produce an itinerary for the day. You will also need to carefully prepare everything relating to the assessment centre, such as assessment packs for the delegates (this will be covered in one of the tips). Its well worth preparing at an early stage a comprehensive checklist covering every action required to organise and run the assessment centre. This can then be re-evaluated after the first event and carried forward as a master plan for future assessment centres. Begin the assessment efficiently. The day is designed to be a two-way process so its important to start by giving the applicants lets call them delegates an introduction to the company, the department, the positions and what will be happening during the day. Then give the delegates an opportunity to ask any questions they may have. To help make everybody comfortable, ask the delegates to briefly introduce themselves. You may find it worth initially asking one of the panel members to introduce themself, having first primed them to

include a mildly humorous comment about their hobbies or outside interests: that will break the ice and help people get rid of any initial nerves they may be experiencing. (You might also learn some revealing information about some delegates!) Finally, you should explain the exercises for the assessment, give a brief overview of the timetable, and mention any house rules such as turning off mobile phones, and where the lavatories are located. Structure the exercises to help you assess the required competencies. The format of assessment centres varies depending on the nature of the job for which candidates are being assessed, the particular competencies that are required, the facilities and time available, and the nature of the organisation. Usually the first exercises are group-based, which will involve participants solving a task such as crossing a river or escaping from a capsizing boat. Other formats might include discussion exercises or role-plays. During the exercises, one or more observers will watch the group in action, record evidence of participants displaying characteristics in the list of adjectives, and mark each delegate on each competency. Desirable competencies might be those such as leadership, teamwork skills, cooperation, idea generation, problem solving, assertiveness, etc. Allow each delegate to make a personal presentation. This part of the day is a great opportunity to see how your delegates take on information and format their presentations. Prior to the day, each delegate should be sent an assessment pack and part of this document should explain what you expect from a presentation, the time allocated to the session and what topics should be used. It is important to explain what tools are available to make the presentation and also to mention what will be critiqued in the format, delivery and content of the presentation. Set up a constructive fill-in exercise. Completing, say, ten personal presentations each lasting five minutes will take some time, so while this exercise is running you will need a parallel exercise to keep the other delegates occupied. A good option for this is to set an interview questionnaire or alternative activity that will take up to an hour to complete. If you use a questionnaire, it should once again be based around the key competencies that you have identified, and use questions such as: Describe occasions when you have used the following competencies (insert a list of competencies). An alternative to a questionnaire could be a situational exercise, in which a workplace situation is described in detail and each delegate is asked to explain in writing exactly how they would deal with the situation. The situation to be used for this exercise should be created using input from the existing team so that it resembles a real-life problem that might be encountered in the job. Make sure you include verbal, numerical and psychometric testing. Although the exercises and presentation will reveal a great deal about each delegates personal abilities, its also important to carry out a test that checks whether their personality and psychological make-up will fit in with your organisation. This type of test is normally marked against previous scores and should also be compared to previous tests that have been completed by existing employees. In addition, numerical and verbal tests may be used to give an

indication of each delegates competence in processing verbal and numerical information. Dont forget to provide feedback and guidance. Its important to remember that when you recruit, you are promoting your company and your employee brand. In this context management of the rejected candidates is just as important as managing the successful ones. You can never tell where they may end up and who they will network with, so at all times your objective should be to leave a positive experience in their mind. This can be achieved by giving them straight and honest feedback, either on the day or soon after the event. It might even be beneficial to create an appointment book and agree a time for the delegates to call back for feedback. Also, creating a booklet on assessment centres to help them improve their future performances will be seen as a positive touch that will help to make the bitter pill of rejection seem slightly sweeter.