There is no doubt about it: putting candidates
through an assessment centre experience will reveal more about them than meeting
them in your office face to face. Fact is that often organisations choose this
approach mostly for managerial jobs and graduates and not for every single
vacancy that they need to fill. According to research
by Employment Review, more than 9 out of 10 employers believe that using
assessment centres are a very (47 %) or fairly (48 %) effective method of
hiring staff. A survey conducted by Equal Opportunities Review among 91 private
companies and public sector institutions found that 53 % believe the costs
involved for the assessment are justified (running between 100 and 500 GBP per
person depending on the position).
If in your company the question arises “Should we
run an Assessment Centre for the xyz job?” you as a recruiter need to make
yourself aware of the advantages and disadvantages.
The benefits are as follows:
- A group of people can be assessed all at the same
place and time by using various methods. It’s surely more time efficient than
inviting every person individually into your office.
- A job applicant’s suitability for a particular job
can be predicted more precisely because you can observe people “in action”. You
can see how the person behaves, communicates, reacts and deals with other
people. This will be an indicator as to how the person would react in a similar
environment in the future.
- On paper candidates might look very similar
regarding their education and experiences but inviting them to an assessment
day will help you to compare them more effectively.
- Candidates will also get better insights into the
job role and will realise whether this is really something they will enjoy
doing or not.
However, the disadvantages should not be ignored:
- It’s surely more time consuming and needs to be
well planned and organised.
- It also involves some financial investment (costs
for designing and hosting the event and finding suitable accommodation if corporate
premises are inadequate).
If you are seriously thinking to run a smooth Assessment
Centre pay attention to these points:
- Consider your company’s values and your brand
recruitment philosophy at all times when planning this event.
- Create a job description, a competency profile and
a person specification. Design exercises which reflect real life situations and
are tailored to the specific role. This can be a bespoke activity, an off the
shelf exercise or a combination of both approaches.
- When choosing the most suitable exercises think
creatively and include also activities which will show a candidate’s future
potential. You need to be clear about how many exercises you want to include
and what the duration for each of them will be. You can choose from a variety
of activities. For example:
- - Role plays in which candidates have to show how
they would behave in a certain situation.
- - A competency based interview in which you ask to
provide examples, outcomes and achievements of past experiences.
- - A presentation which the candidate had the
opportunity to prepare in advance (related to your company or industry).
- - Creating and presenting hands-on work samples.
- - Psychometric tests.
- - In-tray exercises where candidates have to sort
documents and reply to them considering different priorities.
- - Written analysis exercise.
- - Social events in which you see how candidates
interact with other staff and candidates (lunch time or coffee breaks would be
the ideal time for this).
- - A group exercise in which a problem needs to be
solved within a certain time period and realistic solutions need to be
presented.
- Make sure that staff who are conducting these
assessments are experienced, have been trained accordingly and are fully aware
of what type of person you want to hire.
- Organise everything about the event in detail. For
example:
- - What is the date of the assessment? (Set the date
and inform every participant about it well in advance).
- - How many people are attending? (Prepare a list of
all their contact details in case some of the candidates don’t turn up and need
to be contacted).
- - How many people are involved in the assessment
process?
- - What is their exact role?
- - Where does the event take place?
- - Which rooms are required and for how long?
- - Who brings all the documentation and makes sure
that everything runs smoothly?
- - What food and drinks (and quantities) are required?
- - Who starts the introduction and how is it been
conducted?
- - What tech equipment is required and is it all
working properly?
- - Are all activities planned properly?
- - In what chronological order are the activities
taking place? For group activities: who is in which group? For individual
tasks: Who is assessing candidates on an individual basis?
- - Who is in charge of the final part and how will the
event end?
- If internal as well as external people are allowed
to take part in the assessment centre it’s important to create a scorecard
which lists all the key competencies. This will help you to compare candidates
with each other and assess them in a fair and objective way without looking at
past performances.
- It would be helpful for assessors to take detailed
notes throughout the assessment process. In case some candidates might want to
see written evidence of their performance (which they would have the right to request)
it is important to keep any documentation afterwards.
- Candidates should be reviewed on the same day. This
has the advantage that memories and details are still fresh in the assessors’
minds. Then a final decision should be taken.
- Don’t make the mistake to let candidates wait too
long about the assessment outcome. Imagine your top candidate would have
already said YES to another job offer and just because you did not act quickly
you would be forced to hire your second choice! How would you feel? So make
sure you don’t lose top candidates to your competitors in this way.
- Providing successful as well as unsuccessful candidates
with constructive feedback is not just beneficial for the candidate but also
reflects well on a company’s image and reputation, always bear that in mind.
The better you plan
and execute this assessment process the higher your chances are to hire high-quality
talent in the long term. If you take a rushed decision and think assessment
centres are a waste of time you might end up with a bad hire. Now imagine if
this would really be the case … in the end you would still have to spend more
time and money. You want to make sure that the same mistake doesn’t repeat
itself. So, was it then really
worthwhile?
If you need an efficient platform to run the assessments, Skillmeter is here for you. It is super easy to set it up (no IT required) and will help you save time, money and nerves. Click here to learn more about what Skillmeter is and how you can use it.