Reaction to the recent Global Survey of Assessment Centre Practices

As I sit ready to prepare a candidate's feedback report following their attendance at a really well structured assessment centre for one of our client organisations, I have been reminded that a recent survey conducted by A&DC and Colorado State University has thrown up some interesting insights from around the globe concerning Assessment Centre (AC) & Development Centre (DC) practices. 

Without aiming to simply regurgitate the key findings, and knowing that often in this area the academic world and workplace tend to collide, particularly in the graduate sphere. I wanted to share some of the more interesting issues highlighted and given it had 543 respondents from 53 countries some of the regional differences are certainly worth sharing.

• Competencies measured: The number of times a competency is measured across exercises at the centre shows organisations are in the main following best practice of viewing them across at least 3 exercises, where construct validity has been shown to increase.

• Number of competencies to measure: Over half of respondents are still trying to assess more than 7 competencies in any given centre. This is very surprising given the above point of viewing them across 3 different exercises. Europe and Oceania highlighted as the regions most likely to assess the fewest competencies in any given centre.

• Length of centre: Assessment & Development Centres being delivered over half a day continues to raise questions. Are organisations compromising on quality to maximise on time spent running AC’s?

• Candidate to assessor ratio: Concerns that greater than 2:1 candidate to assessor ratios are being used, with the obvious impact on assessor evaluation quality. In Europe 90% of respondents indicated they were following best practice in this area compared with only 47% in the Central & Southern America regions.

• Length of training: The survey continues to call for at least 1 day to be offered to fully train assessors. The report continued to state that 2 days should preferably be set aside for new assessors and even for well seasoned assessors; a full day should be spent on training for any specific centre.  How realistic is this is practise and are assessors able to justify this amount of time out of their core business roles?

• Speed of candidate feedback: The need for candidate feedback is being appropriately considered and we are reminded that any delay longer than a week can be negatively construed, particularly for development centre attendees.

• Lack of job analysis: Somewhat unbelievably, still 3% of respondents are designing assessment centres without any sort of job analysis conducted.  How do they know what they are looking for? 

• Assessor pool: Line managers are the most typical source of assessors in Europe where as in Southern & Central America and Asia HR professionals were the most widely used pool of assessors.

• Use of technology: Where the use of technology in Assessment is concerned Africa and Oceania are regions where it is most likely to be used. Interestingly Europe displayed the lowest use of   technology.

• Psychometric testing: It wouldn't be an assessment focused piece without mentioning the use of testing. We know that predictive validity increases when you include ability testing in the assessment / development centre design process but what is interesting is that the report shows a greater prevalence of personality questionnaires used as additional assessment tools.

• Unpopular fact-finding exercise: Finally, and an insight I personally find interesting, we often see ACs designed with some sort of fact-finding exercise included, particularly at a graduate level, but this is the least popular exercise employed across the whole work sample of the survey.

Arguments raised over the ability to assess behaviour within such a short time frame continue but assessment centres, particularly for selection purposes, where it is the last step in the process and fewer competencies explored over fewer exercises. Half-a-day to 1 day seems to satisfy practical needs. I wanted to hear more about the companies running assessment or development centres that last for more than 4 days......really feel for those assessors (and candidates of course)!

I wonder, is a ratio of 2 candidates to 1 assessor still too much for an assessor to accurately assess behaviour? There is an evident challenge capturing evidence from two very talkative candidates in a 40 minute group exercise.

It is good to see the overall trend for investing correctly in assessor training in increasing across the survey demographic. 

Interestingly we have had a lot of graduates / school leavers feedback that they expected greater use of technology to be included in assessment centres.  

I am sure this will resonate with many centre practitioners in varied organisations. We are always keen to engage in discussion to ensure best practice is adhered to and, where appropriate, challenged given the changing nature of assessment delivery.