An Introduction to Assessment Centres

An assessment centre is one of the most sophisticated selection methods. It is not a place; it is a process. The method is quite simply a formal procedure, incorporating group and individual exercises, tests, interviews etc. for the measurement of performance against key criteria, which have been identified (by job analysis research) as critical to the success of a particular position, or level of management. It does differ, however, from other techniques in several important respects:

• A number of individuals can be evaluated at the same time
• Trained assessors can conduct the event and evaluate the candidates
• The overall assessment of each candidate is based on data collected from a variety of behavioural tasks and evaluated by several assessors

Assessment centres also vary significantly in length, content and format depending on the objectives for the centre, the criteria to be assessed and the type and number of candidates participating. They can last for as little as half a day or as long as two days.

Assessment centres work on the principle of multi-trait multi-method assessment. Any single assessment method may give misleading results; some people interview well, while others are good at tests. A well designed assessment process is based on a criteria/assessment grid and allows multiple assessments of each criteria. Research has shown it to be a much more accurate and cost effective way of selecting than a standard interview.

Unfortunately one often encounters assessment centres which are a collection of tests and exercises, begged, borrowed or stolen, included because of their availability. It is unlikely that such assessment centres will provide an accurate measure of important dimensions of work performance. These poorly constructed assessment centres are unlikely to be any more valid than a traditional interview.

Why Use Assessment Centres?

Many major business, government and non-profit organisations are now using the Assessment Centre method. They have found that Assessment Centres can:

• improve the accuracy of selection decisions by providing the opportunity to observe candidates actually handling the type of tasks and situations with which they will be faced on the job.
• produce a far higher capacity for predicting job performance than that of an unstructured interview. Predictivity for unstructured interviews is only slightly higher than if an employee was selected on the basis of more spurious methods, e.g. star sign, handwriting style.
• improve the effectiveness and credibility of internal selection and promotion procedures by generating valuable development and training information on all short-listed candidates, so that each can obtain some tangible benefit from participation on the process.
• help an organisation in the early identification of management potential and in the diagnosis of individual management development, so that training and development effort can be invested more cost effectively.
• act as a powerful stimulant to management development by providing self-insight into problem areas and, therefore, identifying development priorities;
• provide valuable training for those managers used as assessors particularly in the areas of performance appraisal, counselling and interviewing skills.
• save time and money by combining selection, assessment and the identification of training needs in the same procedure.
• allow group testing, which saves time and staff resources when compared to one-to-one testing.
• create group dynamics, which allows aspects of the individual to be studied that cannot be measured by other means. For example, candidates may describe themselves as dominant and forceful on their application form or when completing a personality inventory, but whether they can actually work effectively in a real-life group situation and persuade others to accept their views remains untested through paper-and-pencil measures
• get behind the front the candidates present due to the length and intensity of the process, to obtain a more accurate impression of their true qualities. The result is that assessment centres are a very good way of predicting how a candidate is likely to behave on a job.

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