Succeeding at Assessment Centres For Dummies, UK Edition

Nigel Povah, Lucy Povah, Nigel Povah

• Publisher: For Dummies
• Year: 2011
• Print ISBN:
  9780470721018
• eBook ISBN:
  9781119996675
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Careers

It's becoming more common for organisations to use assessment centres as part of their recruitment drive. So if you've recently been invited to one, and you're not sure what to expect or how to excel, then this is the book for you. You'll be guided through how each activity is conducted and how to prepare for each part of the selection process. You'll find expert advice on how to shine in every activity - and get the career you want.

Succeeding at Assessment Centres For Dummies covers:

• Standing Out in Group Exercises
• Impressing in Oral Presentations
• Achieving in Analysis Exercises
• Performing in Planning and Scheduling Exercises
• Perfecting Your Approach to Psychometrics

Part I

Introducing Assessment Centres

In this part . . .

For many people the term Assessment Centre conjures up an image of somewhere that you go to be prodded and probed until your innermost secrets are exposed. Little wonder that being asked to attend an Assessment Centre can be an intimidating prospect for the uninitiated!

This part aims to remove the mystique of Assessment Centres, so you can attend armed with the confidence to succeed.

Chapter 1

Demystifying Assessment Centres

In This Chapter

Understanding what an Assessment Centre is and what it isn’t

Knowing why and when Assessment Centres are used

Appreciating why you’re being invited to an Assessment Centre

F or many people an Assessment Centre and what goes on there is a complete mystery. In this chapter we explain just what an Assessment Centre is and what it isn’t. We’re also going to attempt to dispel many of the myths accompanying Assessment Centres, so that if you’re invited to attend a centre you can happily go armed with knowledge and confidence.

We also tell you about the different purposes for which Assessment Centres are used and how they’re run so that you know what to expect when attending an Assessment Centre.

What Assessment Centres Are (and Aren’t)

Hearing the term Assessment Centre for the first time, you may naturally assume that an Assessment Centre is a place where assessments are carried out. This popular misconception is based on the fact that the earliest such assessment events were run at a place called the Assessment Centre, so the name stuck. Nowadays, an Assessment Centre is a particular type of assessment process used for selecting the right person for the right job, and which has been steadily growing in popularity since the Second World War. In short, it is a process not a place.

Defining Assessment Centres

No single, universally accepted definition exists for an Assessment Centre, but there are many versions all tending to say much the same thing. Here’s a typical example:

An integrated system of tests and other measures, including simulation exercises designed to generate behaviour similar to that required for success in a target job or job level.

So what does this tell you? Read on to find out.

Activities are relevant to the actual job you’re seeking

First, you can expect the Assessment Centre to include activities relating to the sorts of things you expect to do in the job you’re being assessed for. For example, if you’re applying for a job as a customer service agent in a call centre, then you may well find that you’re asked to handle one or more customer queries over the phone. This type of activity simulates the real job and is an essential principle of an Assessment Centre.

Assessment Centres set out to use realistic tasks serving to give you a useful insight into the nature of the job that you’re applying for, helping both you and the organisation to decide whether there is a good fit.

The process lets you display behaviours you’re actually going to need

Second, an Assessment Centre is designed to let you display the behaviour that’s considered relevant to the job in question. So, unlike an interview, where you have the opportunity to talk about yourself and what you would do or did do in a given situation, at an Assessment Centre you need to show what you can do, the exercise simulations being both practical and realistic.

If you’ve applied for a particular job and you’ve been invited to attend an Assessment Centre as part of the selection process, try to identify what successful performance in that job would look like. What are the sorts of things a successful job performer would do? These behaviours are what the Assessors will be looking for and this can guide you as to how to behave on the Centre.

History of Assessment Centres

The Assessment Centre method was developed during the Second World War when there was an urgent need to find people with the capability to lead under very difficult circumstances. The milestones for Assessment Centres (ACs) are:

1942: German, UK and US Armed Forces use ACs for the selection of officers

1945: UK Civil Service Selection Board (CSSB) – first non-military use of ACs

1956: Telecoms provider AT&T first use ACs for management devel- opment purposes

1960s: Interest grows in the US: IBM, Standard Oil, General Electric

1970s: Interest grows in the UK: ICL (now part of Fujitsu), Post Office, consumer brand giant Grand Metropolitan

1980s: Increasing use of Assessment Centres for development (DCs)

1990s: Growth in use of AC/DCs in US and UK in public and private sectors

2000s: Growing global interest in use of ACs

An integrated system is designed to give a full picture of your abilities

Third, the reference to an ‘integrated system’ highlights the fact that the various parts of the Assessment Centre process all contribute to the assessment of the behaviours needed in the job you’re being assessed for. This shows that Assessment Centres are carefully constructed events and not simply a set of unrelated tasks that have been thrown together.

Your overall performance is determined by how well you did on the assessment as a whole; a less effective performance on one activity can be compensated for by a more than effective performance on another. So give each activity your ‘best shot’ and don’t be discouraged if you feel you’ve slipped up on one, because you may still have the opportunity to recover.

Well-designed Assessment Centres share certain key features, which we describe in ‘Key Features of Assessment Centres’ later in this chapter.

What an Assessment Centre isn’t

An Assessment Centre is a structur...

Table of contents

• Title
• Contents
• Introduction
• Part I : Introducing Assessment Centres
• Part II : Mastering Assessment Centre Exercises
• Part III : Excelling at Non-Exercise Assessment Centre Activities
• Part IV : The Part of Tens
• : Further Reading