ASSESSMENT CENTERS

The Role of Assessment Centers

Table of Contents

Introduction3

Role of Assessment Centers3

The Assessment Center Method4

Assessment Center Components7

Cognitive Ability Tests7

Personality and Motives Inventories8

Work Simulation Exercises10

Assessment Center Validity11

Conclusion12

The Role of Assessment Centers

Introduction

Employment tests and assessments are used for various purposes such as development, applicant screening, career assessment, and to make hiring decisions in both the public and private sectors. Employment tests and assessments are designed to gauge knowledge, determine behavioral attributes and predict job performance (Whetzel &McDaniel, 2009).

Role of Assessment Centers

In comparison to an interview, an assessment center uses a combination of attributes to test a candidate. Assessment center generally consist of exercises including in-basket tests, group fact finding, role-plays and oral presentations.

Typically, assessment centers are used for managerial or executive level positions, due to the need to assess leadership potential, problem solving, and decision-making skills. This an unfortunate consequence of industry thought, because each of the previous attributes is needed in most lower-level positions (Lievens et.al, 2008). Assessment centers attempt to apply the whole-person approach to personnel selection, as they can be good predictors of job performance and behavior. This is true statement, when the exercises and applications are constructed and applied appropriately.

If assessment centers utilize controlled simulations to elicit the requisite skills, the results yielded would be comparable to those obtained from complex exercises. Simply put, assessment centers are cost prohibitive and are generally created by larger corporations who have deep pockets, by using controlled simulations the cost for employers would be reduced. In addition, by limiting exercises, the need for trained and certified raters would decrease, and it may enhance the accuracy of assessments by allowing exercises to be administered simultaneously.

A typical assessment center will have trained psychologists or high-level managers observe, evaluate, and report behaviors of participants. The observers will rate each participant, share their observations, and evaluations. It is an assumption that the group of raters will come to a group consensus on the candidate's potential ability.62 Although cost is a factor in assessment centers, there are two distinct criticisms regarding the effectiveness of assessment centers in selecting extraordinary employees(Ployhart, 2006). One is those selected as judges, observers or raters. It is common to train and provide examples of good and poor performance, yet a host of situational factors may influence the rater, their evaluations, and some raters go outside the boundaries of acceptable standards.

Furthermore, judges may come to consensus however; the agreement may be contrary to organizational goals. Assessment centers are designed to be interactive however, the exercises tend to occur in poorly, controlled settings. In essence, an individual's score may reflect the setting and not the actual skills of that individual. Moreover, it may be difficult to ascertain if the individual's score is due to other group members, possibly increasing the likelihood of score contamination.

The Assessment Center Method

Assessment centers are a comprehensive method of leadership measurement in that they combine multiple measures of multiple constructs by multiple raters. The definition of Assessment Centers developed by the Task Force on Assessment ...