Every Human Resources professional has found themselves throughout their career in a situation in which they need to evaluate several people quickly and effectively. At that moment, a million doubts can assail us. We can ask ourselves what methodology to use, where to start or what resources we need to carry out a good talent assessment. In short, all these doubts can be summed up in one: How to ensure the success of an Online Assessment Center?
What is an Assessment Center?
The objective of a Talent assessment is nothing more or less than to understand how People behave in certain professional situations in their day-to-day lives. To do this, we focus on their competencies, their functions, responsibilities, adequacy or other aspects depending on the focus of the evaluation.
Generally, in the world of HR consulting, there are three most commonly used evaluations:
- Those that seek to analyse the suitability of candidates, internal or external, for a job.
- Those that aim to deepen the skills of these people and detect development needs. They can give rise to different training plans, among others. (Development Center)
- Performance evaluation, potential evaluation and performance management.
Although each of them has an objective and will focus on analyzing different aspects of the people evaluated, they all share one aspect: when it comes to extracting information, the best way to achieve this is through the performance of several specific tests.
The Assessment Center is, therefore, the methodology that brings together several people to carry out tests aimed at analysing certain aspects. And although it is highly flexible and allows it to adapt to multiple situations, some of its critical points must be taken into account.
How is Assessment Center Online different from traditional Assessment Center?
The great flexibility of the traditional format has allowed it to evolve in recent years and, hand in hand with new technologies, it has replicated the face-to-face version in a 100% online environment.
The Online Assessment Center is the performance in a virtual environment of the necessary tests to be able to evaluate a series of aspects that several people want to analyze.
Even so, as with a lot of terminology of Anglo-Saxon origin, there is still some debate and sometimes the term is used to refer not so much to the Assessment as to the online tests that are integrated into this format. A simple Google search will return a large number of similar terms (Assessment online, Assessment virtual, Assessment digital…) and that, sometimes, are used interchangeably, giving rise to some confusion.
Advantages of the Online Assessment Center
The main advantage of assessment through the digital environment is the disappearance of the old obligation to travel to a specific place on a specific day and at a specific time to take the tests.
In addition, we can dispense with the old tests written on paper and pencil and use technological tools that allow us to:
- Save time and costs.
- A more current, gamified and close image of the tests.
- The possibility of making them more interactive and less monotonous.
- Schedule the different tests and perform visualization and analysis asynchronously (on individual tests). This maximizes the flexibility between the person and the evaluator(s).
Even so, there is one aspect that we must not forget: the importance of the personal interview and that human touch. New technologies have given us many facilities but all the results that are extracted from the different tests we carry out must be complemented with an interview for critical incidents, to evaluate competencies and values.
The human factor, to this day, continues to provide a value that is difficult to match by any artificial intelligence or chatbot in the style of chatGPT. These AI tools do not generate the warmth and closeness ideal for fluid and trusting communication.
How to ensure success in an Online Assessment Center?
There are four aspects that we will have to pay special attention to to ensure that we bring this format to fruition:
1. The design of the Assessment Center:
Let us take the time to define the scope beyond doubt, especially in the following areas:
- Number of participants
- Objective
- What aspects or competencies are we going to measure
- What tests are we going to measure it with?
- What measurement scale are we going to use?
Broadly speaking, an Assessment Centre for selection will focus on assessing the level of competence of the participants, contrasting it with the typical profile. To do this, there are two elements that must exist beforehand: an updated dictionary of skills and a standard profile for the position to be filled.
Don’t have these tools? Before starting to evaluate, prepare these documents since without them it will be impossible to make a rigorous comparison and the decision resulting from the evaluation will lack a methodology to support it.
Similarly, in a Development Center, in addition to the dictionary of competencies, we will need to have an ideal competency profile for each position or for each professional level. Without this, how will we know which skills we need to strengthen?
And of course, whatever tests we use, we need to be very clear about how to score them and according to which criteria a higher or lower grade will be awarded. This detail is especially important in situational tests (Business Case, In-tray, group dynamics…).
2. The resources required:
All evaluation projects, especially massive ones, should be considered as tailor-made projects, in which the allocation of resources and their management will play a key role in their resolution. To do this, there are three main types of resources to which we will have to pay special attention:
-
Time, the scarcest resource:
Let’s schedule each of the project milestones, groups, deadlines, and points of no return. Anticipation is, as in any collective project, the most powerful tool to come out on top.
-
Material resources:
We must supply resources in advance and manage their stock constantly.
- In an Online Assessment Center, technological resources are especially critical. Testing platforms, ATS, Business Intelligence and HR Analytics tools. All of them will need prior configuration, maintenance and resolution of errors and tests. In short: time and people with the knowledge to do it.
- In mass online ACs, credential verification, retest and/or proctoring systems are increasingly important to ensure the identity of the participants.
-
Human resources:
We will control how many evaluators we will need for each test and whether simultaneously or not, but there must also be a Project Manager to ensure the proper management of resources, compliance with milestones and the resolution of possible incidents that may arise at any given time.
As every Project Manager knows, every plan needs a contingency plan. We must analyze everything that can go further or deviate (positive and negative) and propose adjustments.
3. The analysis:
When analysing the results obtained, there are two particularly relevant aspects that we must not forget: the visualisation of the information and the feedback.
-
Visualization:
We must draw the conclusions of the Assessment Center in a clear and visual way. The great progress in Data Visualization in recent years allows us to overcome outdated excels and create dashboards that summarize the main indicators in an attractive, simple and very clear way for any interested party. From the Assessment & Evaluation Areas of Psicotec we recommend the use of these platforms in which, after a slight initial configuration, we will obtain countless options to display and share quality information.
-
Feedback:
Useful for the people being evaluated and also for the evaluators since it allows to generate a climate of trust and collaboration for the future. For both external and internal evaluated, it is essential in any Assessment.
Quality in People Assessment
But if there is one aspect that definitively affects the success of an Online Assessment Center, it is Quality. At Psicotec we are committed to rigour and quality in all our talent assessment processes.
For this reason, in 2013 we became the first Spanish-speaking consulting firm to be certified in the ISO 10667 Standard, which establishes the procedures and methods for the evaluation of people in professional and organizational environments and which serves as a reference to ensure good practices in all our evaluations, whether face-to-face or Assessment Center Online.
A regulation that implies a series of direct benefits in the evaluation and that for Psicotec is part of our DNA and way of working.
Do you need to evaluate talent in your organization? Do you want to analyse the level of competence of your teams? At Psicotec we already collaborate with more than 50 companies and we will be happy to help yours too.