Assessment Centres

Assessment Centres

The Bridges project strand on Assessment Centres links with SOAR and aims to prepare students so that they can demonstrate the requisite skills and attributes in their final year in readiness for employment after graduation.

Academic staff can use Academic Centre behavioural competency indicators to broaden the context for skills development and assessment through the curriculum, providing a real-life focus and rationale for interactive practical skills learning outcomes.

What are Assessment Centres (ACs)?

• Usually the final stage of many employers’ selection procedures – about 5% of applicants get this far (after initial application and interview);
• Multiple assessment activities designed to simulate various aspects of the job and to predict the candidate’s job performance / success / satisfaction;
• Tend to last for a day or two;
• Often held off-site at a hotel or conference centre, but sometimes on employer’s own premises.

Why do employers use them?

• To gain a more multi-dimensional and accurate assessment of suitability, to see how the skills and attributes of the individual fit with the demands of the job;
• Useful when they have many applicants with similar qualifications, e.g. graduates;
• To improve success rates in recruitment and reduce expenditure on employing the ‘wrong’ people;
• To promote fair recruitment practices: every candidate is on a level playing field, with multiple opportunities to be observed and assessed against objective behavioural indicators and competency-based criteria.

Typical Assessment Centre activities

• Introductions - first impressions count! Applicants need to make an appropriate impact in terms of what they say, how they say it, how it comes over;
• Simulation exercises - simulating job tasks, e.g. observed group activities or group discussion, in-tray exercises, business games, etc; applicants have opportunities to demonstrate team effectiveness, drive for results, information handling, communication and interpersonal skills, organising, prioritising, problem-solving and planning skills, confidence, etc.;
• Presentations - on a pre-prepared topic, or maybe one arising from the group activity on the day; verbal and non-verbal communication skills are assessed;
• Psychometric tests - testing aptitude and/or personality attributes;
• Social events - lunch or dinner with other candidates, recent graduates and more senior management - an opportunity to find out more about the organisation in an informal setting, and to demonstrate social competencies;
• Interviews - possibly an exploratory initial interview followed by a second more in-depth panel interview.

Outcomes

Assessment Centres bridge between the way employers assess and recruit graduates and the way tutors teach and assess students. It may be difficult to simulate ACs in their entirety but the methods can be turned into developmental activities that develop a range of students' employability attributes.

Using a broader range of teaching, learning and assessment methods helps to meet the diverse range of students' personal learning styles, and enables tutors to implement the revised curriculum - CRe8 and SOAR approaches.
There are good examples of such practices being tried out at the University:

• an action research project in Psychology (done in co-operation between Isabella McMurray, Pat Roberts [Psychology, HSS], Eileen Scott [CPCD] and Arti Kumar [Bridges CETL] - view PPT about the project);
• an Employability Fellow project in Applied Social Sciences;
• coaching for the major inter-university national Flux competition, which UoB student team won in 2010.

Using Assessment Centre approaches:

• enables critical appreciation of employers' recruitment processes;
• makes 'skills' visible and comprehensible as behaviours and actions;
• creates shared understanding of criteria for observing and assessing 'behavioural competencies', giving and receiving feedback;
• enables constructive alignment of learning objectives with learning methods and outcomes in relation to the development and assessment of employability;
• broadens assessment perspectives - to include self-ratings, peer feedback, tutor assessment - i.e. formative, ipsative and summative assessment;
• develops a range of effective personal attributes.

Bridges CETL funded and supported a variety of Employability Fellow projects, some of which focus on implementing Assessment Centres activities into the curriculum. View the Project reports section to read about them.

Resources

• Contact employers - some employers will provide feedback on the performance of candidates even if they are unsuccessful; this is useful in order to improve future performance;
• Approach the Centre for Personal and Career Development (now Careers and Employment Service) who can help with every aspect of job search, career choice and implementation – through skills workshops, employer contacts, signposting to relevant resources and extra-curricular opportunities to gain experience - visit the Service website;
• Watch the Assessment Centre video or DVD, available from the Service website;
• Practice psychometric tests and tips are in My Success green section (you need the UoB log in to view the resource);
• See Effective Applications section in My Success or signposts to relevant external websites (you need the UoB log in to view the resource);
• Read chapter 6 by Arti Kumar (2009) - 'SOARing for Employability: Can Assessment Centre approaches engage students?' in Creating Bridges (view PDF), UoB first internal publication;
• Read a book chapter by Arti Kumar (2009) - ‘Using assessment centre approaches to improve students' learning’ in Nygaard, C., Holtham, C., & Hawthorn, N. (eds.) Improving Students’ Learning Outcomes, Denmark: CBS Press. (view PDF);
• Download the Assessment Centre poster presented at the Bridging the Gaps 2010 Conference (view PDF).