Virtual Assessment Centres

Assessment centres have long formed an invaluable part of the recruitment process. An assessment centre is an opportunity for candidates to complete a series of activities and tests to demonstrate their suitability for a particular role. Typically, the activities will be based on the organisation’s behavioural competency framework to standardise assessment, performance management, and people development.

While assessment centres were traditionally held in the workplace with several assessors and candidates being seen simultaneously, organisations are starting to move their assessment centres and onboarding process online for both individual and group sessions.

Assessment centres consist of elements such as personality and cognitive ability tests, situational judgement tests, day-in-the-life scenarios, role plays, case study simulations, in-basket exercises, presentations, competency-based interviews, and other similar activities.

All of these elements can be moved online, and virtual assessment centres have the following benefits:

Lower Costs

Traditional assessment centres can be expensive, Booking rooms and arranging logistics such as travel, food, and accommodation require time and resources. Virtual assessment centres can provide a similar level of engagement but at a much lower cost.

Reduced Time

It is not unusual for a traditional assessment centre to take weeks to plan and execute from start to finish. Online assessment centres can automate many administrative tasks, such as scheduling, test management, recording results, and feedback, making planning and running an assessment far more time-efficient. Candidates also save travelling time and benefit from getting results earlier in the recruitment process. If the candidates are internal, the organisation also saves in potential downtime from work.

Ability to Scale

Virtual assessment centres provide a level of scalability not possible with traditional on-site centres, particularly for any organisations with bulk-hiring needs. Virtual assessment centres enable organisations to conduct assessments simultaneously at different locations, without being detrimental to the quality or the results.

Reduction of Bias and Human Error

Traditional on-premise assessment centres can be subject to bias and human error. A virtual assessment centre relies more on automated activities and testing, with little or no objective involvement of an assessor. The standardisation of testing and marking reduces the risk of candidates experiencing an unfair process and enables those running the centre to have more confidence in the results.

Candidates completing the assessments online may also experience less stress when not travelling and being able to complete activities in familiar surroundings.

Virtual assessment centres can be customised to individual needs avoiding the more typical “one size fits all” approach in a traditional centre. Assistive technology can also help provide a fairer environment for those with disabilities.

Data Recording

Traditional assessment centres create mounds of paperwork that needs to be reviewed and stored, from test and activity texts to the feedback and results. Much of the content is considered confidential to ensure a fair approach for all candidates, meaning that paperwork must be accounted for at the end of a session.

In addition to the immediate benefits of having everything recorded online, an added advantage is that the data is available for analysis, audit, and benchmarking to improve the process’s transparency and quality.

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