Should you use assessment centres to assess and recruit top talent?
During a meeting with a potential client recently, to discuss some assessment centre exercises we are creating, I was asked an interesting question:
Are assessment centre exercises suitable for use as part of the recruitment and selection process for senior and director level posts?
My answer was absolutely!
In my opinion, the more senior the position, the greater the impact that individual will have on the organisation – making it even more important to make the right decision.
Using an assessment centre approach enables a more in-depth and rigorous approach to exploring and uncovering a candidate’s suitability.
In order for them to be used successfully however, it is super-duper important that:
1. Face validity is high – getting the right level of challenge, which accurately reproduces and reflects the demands of the role.
2. The exercises send the right messages to the candidate – there is always two-way selection going on during a recruitment process, and at the most senior levels top talent can be scarce so an organisation has to present itself well. An organisation will not maintain the interest of the best candidates if its assessment and selection methods are poorly conceived, appear out of date or lacking relevance.
What role should they play?
Like any tool, assessment centre exercises have their place and should never be used in isolation. In my experience, they are most powerful when used after some initial sifting activities have taken place, i.e. CV sift and telephone interview. If dealing with high candidate volumes, then possibly some psychometrics, such as an ability test or situational judgement test (SJT).
I personally like to use them as a method for providing a deep and rigorous assessment of a final line up of potentially suitable candidates for a role. I.e. based on the information that has been reviewed so far, on paper we know they CAN do the job, what we are then most interested in, is HOW they will do the job. I will also be using the information from the assessment centres alongside the information gathered, i.e. from a competency interview and the psychometrics.
Calling out the obvious, yes, running an assessment centre is more time and resource intensive than other selection methods used on their own, and as a result can be more expensive. However, when you look at the investment in running a more rigorous process (i.e. incorporating an assessment centre into your recruitment process) compared to the cost of a bad hire – or even the percentage your head hunter will be charging, the numbers absolutely do add up.
Find out more…
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The encore.
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