An organization’s human resource centers consider this assessment centers as their vital part. While setting up an assessment center, the firm’s objectives should be considered with high priority and accordingly, it must be designed. The assessment policies will differ according to the post to which the recruiting is done. The assessors will be trained human personnel and they test the ability based on various skills required. They will design the exercises after a thorough understanding of the job requirement. The simulated real-time situations are given to the candidates to observe their behavioral traits linked to the intended position. Hence the situational exercises must aim at the important features of the job objective.
To examine the personalities of different employees in an organization, many are using Virtual assessment centers. Starting from the recruitment process, through training, the assessment centers can play a crucial role according to the organizational challenges. The features of best assessment centers may vary according to the different firms for which they are working. The assessment centers normally possess characteristics such as the trained evaluators, specific test modules, and evaluating methods to conclude the appraisal of each participant.
Advantages of virtual assessment centers:
Saves time and money:
Many activities can be conducted as well as results can also be uploaded online, which would save the time wasted for any offline and manual assessment process.
Helps in a very fair assessment:
Sometimes in other modes of selection procedure candidate’s ability does not get an appropriate judgment and influenced by many other factors like religion, gender, and race. VAC process would not be affected by a candidate’s age, religion, race, and gender.
Serves as a platform to learn:
The use of a virtual assessment center is not only beneficial for the candidate it also allows the employee to enhance their observational and evaluating skills. It provides management tools to assessors’ team which help them for their development and give them a better learning experience.
Offers equal opportunities for all:
In much research, it has been found that candidates are satisfied with getting equal opportunity to show their talent and they find that activities in VAC are more relevant to any particular job than a manual assessment. They measure the behavior of the candidate which is related to a targeted job rather than measuring general characteristics that are not valid for the targeted job.
Helps in comparing past and present performance:
An organization can use the data of assessment to investigate all possibilities and identify the inefficient areas of the currently working employees. After identifying the deficiency top management could organize the relevant training program to beat those shortcomings. This way an organization can improve the performance of each department of the company and later on, the overall company’s performance will improve.
Aids decisions of top management:
It is not easy for being an HR practitioner. Almost every day they need to take many critical decisions. Identifying talent and capability gaps of the candidate is one of the key decisions that they need to take. A virtual assessment center becomes a savior for them in many ways. It provides a focused and well-planned approach for talent selection and their development because many candidates want to know how they can improve their performance.
Components of virtual assessment centers:
An assessment and development center usually consists of multiple tasks and activities designed to get a large scale of knowledge, experts, and efficiency that are demanded the job under standardized conditions. It is a type of personality test to determine the candidate’s suitability for a particular job/role. It conducts fairly and pre-selected assessors to see all the candidates in an equal. They will use the common frame of reference for all the tests to judge the candidate.
- Role-play exercises
Many times the candidates are left with some situations which are more like real-life problems. The way through which he finds the solution to that particular situation or the ability of planning, organizing, communication, etc were checked during these exercises.
- Personality tests
The personal traits desirable to the specific job are tested through these kinds of exercises. These traits may include self-confidence, perseverance, stress management, etc. The exercises are normally not restricted by time. The average expected time for completion will be given to the candidates. The scores of the candidates are compared with a reference group that has established employers in the same area. As these types of assessments are found to be a little expensive, they are incorporated in the higher-level employee selection or training.
- Cognitive ability tests
Critical thinking skills, numerical thinking, and analytical reasoning are inevitable in any type of MNC job. The first level of filtration can be done through these tests. The ability to perform under pressure is measured while conducting these time-bound exams. Here the ultimate potential of a candidate is measured. But as the job performance is the combination of personality traits and the required field skills, the better results can be expected when the personality tests are combined with the other test modes.
- Others:
- Psychometrics analysis: Psychometric assessment is used to do by asking the participant’s opinion in various real-time situation based questions.
- Situational judgment tests: It helps to check behavioral reactions in different real-life scenarios like a business.
- Cognitive assessment: Use to measure the cognitive ability of participants.
- Game-based business simulation: This test is designed to determine the influencing skill of candidates with a game like an exercise.
- Inbox simulation test: To observe the email inbox managing skill of a participant.
- Case study: They capture detailed reactions to real-life business scenarios with a different analytical framework.
- Leadership skill test: Virtual assessment center test leadership skills of the participant using different scenarios.
- Behavioral event interview: In this way participants will be asked to describe their experiences in a particular situation in their past
Final words:
Professionally conducted and fair process of selection which provides equal opportunity to all the candidates are the key features of a virtual assessment center. It also gives deeper insight into the reaction of the different candidates in different situations which can be very decisive of the job.
