Introduction
Assessment centres go as early as a century ago. The first assessment centre was used to select military soldiers during World War 2. The assessment centres were later founded to assess different types of talents. Organizations all over the world use assessment centres to conduct the assessment to choose the people they want from a list of candidates. The centres have, however, evolved as the world evolves and transforms into digital. The evolution has paved the way for thousands of business organizations worldwide who are using assessment centres to evaluate their new candidates, internal promotions, and talent development programs (El Ouirdi, 2016 p.416). Earlier days, most organizations used CVs and interviews. The organizations later discovered that the use of CV was not the most effective method to evaluate candidates. This is because during the interviews, most interviewers missed talking about negative traits of the candidate, and they were not evaluated. The negative traits of a person and they can cause negative effects on the business if not well handled. Sometimes even the positive traits were not credited as they mostly concentrated on educational background and experience but not traits (Tripathi, 2016 p.31). Assessment centres are meant to assess the true potential of the candidates. They are considered the best way to finding out all about the candidates.
Working for a HR organization for recruitment, it is necessary to know all about assessment centres and the processes used in selecting a candidate. They use exercises and tools to evaluate the candidates. There are different activities that can be used to make you know your candidate better both in traits and characters. The proper combination of the tools and exercises is very important for the assessment to be successful and yield good candidates. The organization conducts the assessment for a whole working day. The assessment duration usually depends on the type of candidate needed and the role the candidate is supposed to fill. Assessment for senior positions takes more time than normal employees. To choose the candidates who will be shortlisted for the assessment centres, one can use application forms. An assessment centre requires a lot of activities and can sometimes be time-consuming than traditional methods. That is the reason why some candidates are not shortlisted to join the assessment centres as they may be many of them, and the process could take longer. Only the best candidates in the application forms are invited for the whole assessment.
Assessment centres can be used to test all types of talents or different stages of career achievements, such as graduate hiring, executive levels, and middle-level employees. A variety of well-designed tests is given to all the candidates shortlisted for assessment. The tests are meant to simulate the candidates’ ability to do the job in the available working environment for candidates to show how they can use their skills to match what is being done in the organizations. All the organizations use different exercises for assessment, depending on the best that suits them or the job position. Here are some of the most common and efficient activities that are done in assessment centers to help select the most qualified candidate.
Assessment of Centre Activities
- Meeting and briefing session
Some people do not see this as assessment activities, but it is a very important part of the assessment. The purpose of this activity is mostly the introduction of all the involved members. In some assessment centers, one member conducts the assessment, but in others, a group of hiring manager conducts the evaluation (Orr, 2018 p.118). It is beneficial as it also evaluates how a candidate interacts with other people in an informal situation. It also creates a tone for how the rest of the assessment will be throughout the duration. The participants also are able to predict what is expected at the end of the whole exercise. The exercise has a shortcoming as only one meeting can determine the rest of the exercise. If the activity does not succeed, then the whole exercise is likely to fail.
- Competency-based interview
This is an activity that involves a series of questions that are well structured and standard for the candidates. The fair process is ensured by asking the same questions to all the candidates. The interviewers maybe three or more people. The questions are real life related that ask questions about past experiences. The purpose of this activity is for the candidates to show their personalities and their skills. Questions about the organization that the candidate applied to are asked to test their knowledge and for the company (Flower, 2019 p.412). A lot of companies such as Macdonald’s use this activity for the recruitment of senior positions holders. This activity usually takes around one hour. A competency framework is a specific job design designed for any type of group. Competency frameworks are usually customized and are different depending on the type and culture of the organizations. All the questions asked in this activity are about competency within the specific framework of the job position. They measure the levels of understanding of the candidates. Due to the ability of predict, the activity is very efficient.
- Psychometric assessments
This type of activity is important in evaluating the personality of the candidates and his or her abilities in the job. The activity is not a test, as there are no right and wrong answers. It is more of a personality test. It helps the interviewer get more insight details on the candidate. The questions are designed to help build an analysis of the candidate and the way he or she works. The assessment activity can either be done at the assessment center or even online during application (Corin, 2016 p.16). All this is determined by the interviewers. Most of the questions asked here have options to choose from. The options are such: Agree, strongly disagree, not sure, strongly disagree among others depending on the assessment center. The formats also change from one organization to another (Nikoloski, 2016 p.45). The behaviors in the workplace are also tested in this activity. The candidates’ reaction to different situations is also evaluated in this activity.
- Group-based exercise
This is a common activity used by many recruitment departments all over the world. The purpose of this activity is to evaluate the ability of the candidate to participate in a team. A group of candidates performs some tasks together, and the assessor stands aside, evaluating them and their contribution to the tasks (Collmus, 2016 p.113). The assessors note down the scores each candidate scored while working in a group. The task is usually a hypothetical dilemma that the groups have to come up with solutions for. A number of situations are presented to the groups where they are expected to prioritize the issues according to their necessity. Other times the test could require group discussion on issues that are currently affecting businesses (Hudson, 2017 p.327). The benefits of this activity are to evaluate abilities to work as a team, abilities of the candidates to speak up their ideas and support them in a group of people, abilities to see one idea in different perspectives, social skills, among other things. Problem-solving ability is also evaluated using this exercise. Group exercises are very important as they show you how a candidate will do in the real workplace. Negative traits that can be dangerous in the workplace are also assessed.
- Presentation exercise
This is used specifically in those types of job positions that require presentation of information such as finance, sales, and also working in places that require a lot of customer interactions. There is a variety of topics that are to be presented, depending on the format. During the presentation exercise, candidates can be asked to present the work they already did in group exercise, all given a case study to work on and then present it (Van Esch, 2019 p.219). In some organizations, the candidates are given topics to research and present on the assessment centre date (Byker, 2016 p.272). The presentations are usually short so that a lot of time is not wasted. The purpose of this exercise is to identify the abilities of candidates to read materials and identify the key messages as well as the ability to come up with solutions for problems provided. The presentation should take five to six minutes. An example of an organization that conducts presentation exercises at assessment centres is Microsoft. The ability to presentation tools is also evaluated. Some of the important abilities tested here are the ability to structure and organize points effectively, speaking in public, ability to deliver information, among others. This exercise is done most of the time to complement other activities (Huber, 2018 p.28).
- Role-play exercise
Traits such as communication are tested in role-play exercise. Negotiation skills are also evaluated by the assessors in this activity. The test is essential to the candidates viewing for positions that require interpersonal interactions (Bohlouli, 2017 p.85). Examples of the types of organizations that use this activity are such as sales-related companies. The activity also tests the ability of the candidate to act as a leader, among other abilities. These role-play are done by individuals or groups (Hofhuis, 2016 p.1321). The participants are given roles that are the same as the ones in the jobs they applied for, and then the way they handle themselves is evaluated. A good example is a job position that deals with customers. Your problem-solving ability, as well as the ability to help customers, is assessed.
Conclusion
All these activities have been used by many organizations to choose the best candidate from a list of candidates. There is competition for good employees in many organizations, although the number of candidates is high, most of them lack good personal qualities. All good organization knows that good employees are important in running the business. Human resource is crucial for every organization. Some organizations, however, do not know how to assess candidates. They end up employing bad employees who do not have good work qualities. Organizations such as Macdonald’s, Microsoft, and Devondale Company all use these assessment exercises to evaluate the candidates. The activities have proven to be functional even in selecting candidates for senior positions such as executives.