Human Assets

 

There is a set of interrelated reasons for ensuring that talent is identified accurately. Most obviously, you want to ensure that the right people - the truly talented - are selected to join your talent pool. Secondly, to retain talented people, you have to address their requirements such as being developed and experiencing accomplishment on important projects. Only a limited number of people can be offered these top-flight opportunities and so it is vital that the right people are chosen. Otherwise, you risk offering these engaging enticements to the second tier while the genuinely talented move off elsewhere.

 

Assessment centres have enjoyed a reputation as the superior method of choosing people and this should extend to their use in the identification of talent, both internal and external. However, assessment centres have also been plagued by the problem that they tend to reach a series of somewhat contradictory global judgements of applicants rather than the intended careful evaluation of individual dimensions or competencies. The more the assessment centre is being used to pinpoint a small elite the more potentially worrying this finding becomes. Furthermore, this exercise effect - as the phenomenon is known - seems to run counter to our near certainty at an intuitive level that a well-designed assessment centre works and works well.

 

A recent paper by Mark Bowler and David Woehr from the University of Tennessee examined this issue. They took an overview of assessment centre research and demonstrated once again that assessment centres tend to produce a series of global judgements, albeit with some significant differentiation between dimensions. However, their real contribution is to point out that some dimensions (e.g. communication) are easier to rate accurately than others (e.g. consideration of others and drive). They also remind us that there is a natural exercise effect to the extent that the dimensions being rated are connected (e.g. problem solving and decision making).

 

From a practitioner's point of view, Bowler and Woehr's paper is a forceful reminder that assessment centres need careful and professional design if they are to identify talent accurately. The exercise effect needs to be minimized in favour of the accurate assessment of people's strengths and weaknesses. At the same time, the assessment centre designer needs to be aware of the inevitable remaining exercise effect and design assessment centres accordingly. In particular, if a global rating is formed from each exercise, it is imperative that each exercise focuses on a situation that will separate the truly talented person from the rest. Major corporations that still have assessment centres consisting mainly of 'lego' problems are committing a major folly. However interesting a candidate's approach might be, it is unlikely to be at all predictive of the excellent performance that genuine talent is hired to deliver.

 

 

As the UK's leading consultancy in bespoke development and assessment centres, we have the expertise to ensure that your assessment centres identify talent accurately. This expertise is represented in the fourth edition of Charles Woodruffe’s book Development and Assessment Centres: Identifying and Developing Competence.

 

If you want to discuss your assessment or development centre, you can contact our consultants on +44(0)20 7434 2122 or enquiries@humanassets.co.uk

 

 

Bowler, Mark C and Woehr, David J. (2006). A meta-analytic evaluation of the impact of dimension and exercise factors on assessment center ratings. Journal of Applied Psychology, Vol 91, No 5, pp 1114-1124.

Newsletter: April  2007