An assessment centre is a process where candidates are examined to determine their suitability for specific types of employment, especially management or military command. The candidates' personality and aptitudes are determined by techniques including interviews, group exercises, presentations, examinations and psychometric testing.
An early example of assessment is the story of Gideon selecting the most suitable Israelite warriors: [1]
Then the Lord said to Gideon, “The people are still too many; bring them down to the water and I will test them for you there. Therefore it shall be that he of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall go with you,’ he shall go with you; but everyone of whom I say to you, ‘This one shall not go with you,’ he shall not go.” So he brought the people down to the water. And the Lord said to Gideon, “You shall separate everyone who laps the water with his tongue as a dog laps, as well as everyone who kneels to drink.” Now the number of those who lapped, putting their hand to their mouth, was 300 men; but all the rest of the people kneeled to drink water. The Lord said to Gideon, "I will deliver you with the 300 men who lapped and will give the Midianites into your hands; so let all the other people go, each man to his home."
In modern times, the German army introduced assessment techniques for selecting its officers in the 1930s. Psychologist Max Simoneit was appointed to head the army's laboratory and introduced leadership tests. These were terminated in 1941 after too many favoured candidates had failed them. [1]
Assessment centres were created in World War II to select officers and are still commonly used in military recruitment today. Examples include the Admiralty Interview Board of the Royal Navy and the War Office Selection Board of the British Army. [2] After World War 2, The OSS type of assessment centre was essentially abandoned in The United States except for some internal use in intelligence gathering operations by the CIA. The British Civil Service Selection Board and Australians identified participants still used it for selection on their military college. Also, South Africans used the technique to identify supervisors in gold mines.
Assessment centres specifically applied for industrial usage can be traced back to the early 1950s and the pioneering work of Robert K Greenleaf and Douglas W. Bray of the American Telephone & Telegraph Company (AT&T). Douglas W. Bray as a director of human resources at AT&T, directed a study that lasted over 20 years and followed the careers of young business managers as they progressed up the telephone company rankings. This study showed that the assessment centre method could successfully predict organizational achievement and was later implemented throughout AT&T and later on adopted by many other companies: IBM, Standard Oil (Ohio) and Sears for example.
In 1975, the first guidelines on the use of assessment centres was created as a statement of the considerations believed to be most important for all users of the assessment center method. The guidelines ensure the integrity of the process, the validity of the data, qualifications of assessors, and the rights of the participants. The guidelines have since been revised several times to reflect current legality issues, global insights, and technological advances in the field. The most current version of the Guidelines and Ethical Considerations for Assessment Center Operations was endorsed by the 38th International Congress on Assessment Methods in Alexandria, Virginia in October 2014. Today, The ACM is used by organizations all over the world in both private and public sectors to better select of employees and identifying their development in different areas. [3]
AT&T created a building for recruitment of staff in the 1950s. This was called The Assessment Centre and was influential on subsequent personnel methods in other businesses. [4]
Other companies use this method to recruit for their graduate programmes by assessing the personality and intellect of potential employees who have recently graduated from university and have nil or limited work history. The big four accountancy firms conduct assessment centre days to recruit their trainees. 72% of employers in the UK and USA now use some form of assessment centre as part of their recruitment/promotion process. [5] In recent years companies have been set up to support assessment centre coaching. [6] [7]
Assessment centre is not just a building for assessing a job candidate, it is a process of evaluation of behaviour based on multiple evaluation including: job related simulations, interviews or psychological tests.
The ultimate reason for having an assessment centre in any organization is to gather all relevant information under a standardized conditions about an individual's capabilities to perform a given task. Assessment centres are often the method of choice for selecting senior leaders in government and municipal jobs, including police chief and fire captains.
During the process of assessing candidates, series of exercises that are designed to simulate the condition of a given job are given to the candidate to do. This helps the assessor to determine if the candidate possesses the necessary skill and behaviour needed for the job.
The assessment centre method provides a sort of wide-ranging, multidimensional assessment that has a strong record of both research significance and practical effectiveness to be accepted by participants and decision-makers alike. In essence, the purpose of assessment centre is to examine the skills and psychological state of an individual in order to determine his or her performance. [8]
Psychological testing is the administration of psychological tests. Psychological tests are administered by trained evaluators. A person's responses are evaluated according to carefully prescribed guidelines. Scores are thought to reflect individual or group differences in the construct the test purports to measure. The science behind psychological testing is psychometrics.
A personality test is a method of assessing human personality constructs. Most personality assessment instruments are in fact introspective self-report questionnaire measures or reports from life records (L-data) such as rating scales. Attempts to construct actual performance tests of personality have been very limited even though Raymond Cattell with his colleague Frank Warburton compiled a list of over 2000 separate objective tests that could be used in constructing objective personality tests. One exception however, was the Objective-Analytic Test Battery, a performance test designed to quantitatively measure 10 factor-analytically discerned personality trait dimensions. A major problem with both L-data and Q-data methods is that because of item transparency, rating scales and self-report questionnaires are highly susceptible to motivational and response distortion ranging all the way from lack of adequate self-insight to downright dissimulation depending on the reason/motivation for the assessment being undertaken.
Staffing is the process of finding the right worker with appropriate qualifications or experience and recruiting them to fill a job position or role. Through this process, organizations acquire, deploy, and retain a workforce of sufficient quantity and quality to create positive impacts on the organization’s effectiveness. In management, staffing is an operation of recruiting the employees by evaluating their skills and knowledge before offering them specific job roles accordingly.
Army Officer Selection Board(AOSB) is an assessment centre used by the British Army as part of the officer selection process for the regular army and Army Reserve and related scholarship schemes. The board is based at Leighton House, Westbury in Wiltshire, England in a dedicated camp. It is commanded by the President AOSB, a Colonel in the British Army, supported by a number of vice-presidents. The current President is Col. Lucy Giles.
Recruitment refers to the overall process of identifying, sourcing, screening, shortlisting, and interviewing candidates for jobs within an organization. Recruitment can also refer to the processes involved in choosing individuals for unpaid roles. Managers, human resource generalists and recruitment specialists may be tasked with carrying out recruitment, but in some cases public-sector employment, commercial recruitment agencies, or specialist search consultancies are used to undertake parts of the process. Internet-based technologies which support all aspects of recruitment have become widespread, including the use of artificial intelligence (AI).
Personnel selection is the methodical process used to hire individuals. Although the term can apply to all aspects of the process the most common meaning focuses on the selection of workers. In this respect, selected prospects are separated from rejected applicants with the intention of choosing the person who will be the most successful and make the most valuable contributions to the organization. Its effect on the group is discerned when the selected accomplish their desired impact to the group, through achievement or tenure. The procedure of selection takes after strategy to gather data around a person so as to figure out whether that individual ought to be utilized. The strategies used must be in compliance with the various laws in respect to work force selection.
Competence is the set of demonstrable characteristics and skills that enable and improve the efficiency or performance of a job. The term "competence" first appeared in an article authored by R.W. White in 1959 as a concept for performance motivation. In 1970, Craig C. Lundberg defined the concept in "Planning the Executive Development Program". The term gained traction when in 1973, David McClelland wrote a seminal paper entitled, "Testing for Competence Rather Than for Intelligence". It has since been popularized by Richard Boyatzis and many others, such as T.F. Gilbert (1978) who used the concept in relationship to performance improvement. Its use varies widely, which leads to considerable misunderstanding.
Authentic assessment is the measurement of "intellectual accomplishments that are worthwhile, significant, and meaningful," as contrasted with multiple-choice tests. Authentic assessment can be devised by the teacher, or in collaboration with the student by engaging student voice. When applying authentic assessment to student learning and achievement, a teacher applies criteria related to “construction of knowledge, disciplined inquiry, and the value of achievement beyond the school.”
The Admiralty Interview Board (AIB) is an assessment centre, tracing its roots to 1903, that is used by the Naval service as part of the officer selection process for the Royal Navy, Royal Marines, Royal Naval Reserve, Royal Marines Reserve, and Royal Fleet Auxiliary. It is an equivalent of the Army Officer Selection Board and the Officer and Aircrew Selection Centre of the Royal Air Force. The board is based at HMS Sultan in Gosport, Hampshire within a self-contained compound.
The European Personnel Selection Office (EPSO) is responsible for selecting staff to work for the institutions and agencies of the European Union including the European Parliament, the European Council, the Council of the European Union, the European Commission, the European Court of Justice, the Court of Auditors, the European External Action Service, the Economic and Social Committee, the Committee of the Regions and the European Ombudsman. Each institution is then able to recruit staff from among the pool of candidates selected by EPSO. On average, EPSO receives around 60,000-70,000 applications a year with around 1,500-2,000 candidates recruited by the European Union institutions.
Psychological evaluation is a method to assess an individual's behavior, personality, cognitive abilities, and several other domains. A common reason for a psychological evaluation is to identify psychological factors that may be inhibiting a person's ability to think, behave, or regulate emotion functionally or constructively. It is the mental equivalent of physical examination. Other psychological evaluations seek to better understand the individual's unique characteristics or personality to predict things like workplace performance or customer relationship management.
In the United States education system, School Psychological Examiners assess the needs of students in schools for special education services or other interventions. The post requires a relevant postgraduate qualification and specialist training. This role is distinct within school psychology from that of the psychiatrist, clinical psychologist and psychometrist.
The term managerial assessment of proficiency (MAP) describes a methodology for the assessment of managerial competence in human resource and training applications. MAP is designed for evaluation of a manager's proficiency in 12 prescribed competencies, and other criteria. Assessments can be generated for an employee, as well as for a department or the organisation as a whole. Normative values, used for comparative purposes in each assessment, are based upon the performance of over 110,000 managers, across 17 countries, in more than 600 organisations that have used MAP, according to the UK-based company, Development Processes Group plc, that licenses the tool into organisations. The Managerial Assessment of Proficiency - (MAP2), copyright 2012, 2014, HRD Press, Inc. is an assessment tool published by HRD Press, Inc. Amherst, MA USA, and is available throughout the world. "Development Processes Group plc" is the exclusive representative in the United Kingdom.
Competency-based recruitment is a process of recruitment based on the ability of candidates to produce anecdotes about their professional experience which can be used as evidence that the candidate has a given competency. Candidates demonstrate competencies on the application form, and then in the interview, which in this case is known as a competency-based interview.
An assessment day is usually used in the context of recruitment. On this day, a group of applicants who have applied for a particular role are invited to an assessment centre, where a combination of selection techniques are used by the employers to measure the suitability of an individual for the job role. These selection technique usually include exercises such as presentation, group exercise, one to one Interview, role play, psychometric test etc. Most large organisations like banks, audit and IT firms use assessment days to recruit the fresh talent in their graduate programmes. With an increase of popularity of assessment days, several training institutes have been formed that prepare candidates for assessment days, for example, Green Turn is a famous institute that prepares candidates for assessment days of big 4 accountancy firms.
Individual psychological assessment (IPA) is a tool used by organizations to make decisions on employment. IPA allows employers to evaluate and maintain potential candidates for hiring, promotion, and development by using a series of job analysis instruments such as position analysis questionnaires (PAQ), occupational analysis inventory (OAI), and functional job analysis (FJA). These instruments allow the assessor to develop valid measures of intelligence, personality tests, and a range of other factors as means to determine selection and promotion decisions. Personality and cognitive ability are good predictors of performance. Emotional Intelligence helps individuals navigate through challenging organizational and interpersonal encounters. Since individual differences have a long history in explaining human behavior and the different ways in which individuals respond to similar events and circumstances, these factors allow the organization to determine if an applicant has the competence to effectively and successfully do the work that the job requires. These assessments are administered throughout organizations in different forms, but they share one common goal in the selection process, and that is the right candidate for the job.
A pre-hire assessment is a test or questionnaire that candidates complete as part of the job application process. The use of a valid and expert assessment is an effective way to determine which applicants are the most qualified for a specific job based on their strengths and preferences. Employers typically use the results to determine how well each candidate's strengths and preferences match the job requirements.
In aquatic toxicology, the sediment quality triad (SQT) approach has been used as an assessment tool to evaluate the extent of sediment degradation resulting from contaminants released due to human activity present in aquatic environments. This evaluation focuses on three main components: 1.) sediment chemistry, 2.) sediment toxicity tests using aquatic organisms, and 3.) the field effects on the benthic organisms. Often used in risk assessment, the combination of three lines of evidence can lead to a comprehensive understanding of the possible effects to the aquatic community. Although the SQT approach does not provide a cause-and-effect relationship linking concentrations of individual chemicals to adverse biological effects, it does provide an assessment of sediment quality commonly used to explain sediment characteristics quantitatively. The information provided by each portion of the SQT is unique and complementary, and the combination of these portions is necessary because no single characteristic provides comprehensive information regarding a specific site
CodeSignal is a skills-based assessment platform operated by American company BrainFights, Inc. Founded in 2014 and headquartered in San Francisco, CodeSignal applies game mechanics that offer developers of all skill levels online computer programming challenges for both instructional and recruiting purposes.
Competence assessment is a process in which evidence is gathered by the assessor and evaluated against agreed criteria in order to make a judgement of competence. Skill assessment is the comparison of actual performance of a skill with the specified standard for performance of that skill under the circumstances specified by the standard, and evaluation of whether the performance meets or exceed the requirements. Assessment of a skill should comply with the four principles of validity, reliability, fairness and flexibility.
