Assessment Centre Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Assessment Centre - Essay Example Leivens (2001) has pointed out the fact that assessment centres have gained popularity and fame in last 4 decades as they have become a very useful source that facilitate in recruitment and selection of employees. In general, the assessment centres refer to a development centre or a one-day workshop where Human Resource Professionals evaluate the qualities, personality traits, and attributes followed by decision – making and problem – solving skills of potential candidates. For instance, these centres are created for the purpose of facilitating HR executives in recruitment and induction of the smart candidates, who will then contribute their abilities and knowledge in survival, expansion and sustainable development of an organisation. Among the major benefits of assessment centres (ACs), the most important is that they are quite effective in testing behavioural issues / problems, psychology, mental strength and attitudes of potential candidates. For instance, the assess ors make observations, recordings and use psychological tests / tools / scales to check locus of control, openness, conscientiousness, extroversion, pressure assimilation, will power and other factors after which evaluations and feedbacks are provided. In this way, the recruiters draw conclusions about emotional stability of an employee coupled with his / her underlying strengths and weaknesses (Leivens et al, 2001). As far as the objectives of assessment centres are concerned, it is worthwhile to mention that assessors tend to have case studies, debates, open and group discussion sessions, group exercises and presentations to test level of creativity, personal drive, critical thinking, communication and interpersonal skills in a candidate. For instance, the assessors also organise randomly selected candidates into work groups and teams, which are then assigned various situations and real – world scenarios in order to test team building skills, relationship building, flexibil ity, analytical capabilities, leadership styles and mutual cooperation / coordination among members. These medium duration exercises help providing relatively better analysis about aforementioned qualities in candidates compared to observations and responses during face-to-face interviews. It should be highlighted that another advantage of assessment centres is to judge conflict resolution, crises handling and contingency plan development abilities either though individual or groups tests. In addition, candidates may be assigned responsibilities to develop a realistic business plan to judge vision, strategic planning, forecasting, risk identification, analysis and measurement, marketing, adaptability, innovation, differentiation and other capabilities as a whole. For instance, assessment centres also evaluate and testify how honest, moral and ethical a candidate is through assignment of certain ethical scenarios, dilemmas and lapses. The aforementioned enabled HR executives to get a n insight over the importance that an applicant could have for Code of Conduct, Organisational Cons and Rule of Law. In addition, the candidates are scrutinised for assessment of competitiveness, task – orientation, performance approach, employee centredness, and relationship – orientation so that they could be prepared to assimilate pressure in an unpredictable and complex business environment (Kolk et al, 2003). It is justified to argue that the actual aim of assessment cen