Jarred Consulting

With the sudden need to stay at home, the idea of running assessment centres has become a more complex one. It doesn’t take much to be able to turn your current assessment centre materials into a virtual recruitment experience that shows candidates you are responsive, responsible and ready to adapt. There are some things you can do to create a quick fix for the current times and there are platforms which can provide you with a long-term solution. Here are our 8 top tips to run virtual assessment centre over the next weeks and into the future. 1. Preserve the candidate experience One of the biggest concerns for this immediate period of virtual assessment centres is how to keep the feel that the candidates get from visiting your office and meeting your people. Keep current employees involved with what is put in place, that Q&A session or time with current graduates becomes even more important to give the brand feel and personal touch. The interaction with staff doesn’t need to happen when candidates are undertaking exercises, you could do something before the assessment centre starts or have Facebook live sessions – the social media you are already using will really help. 2. Think how you timetable There are really two options here, run the assessment as normal or spread activities across a number of days. The decision will be dependent on the technology and resource capacity you have. Think about how the candidates and assessors may feel spending most of a day undertaking the assessment activities at a computer. If you are short on resources, it may be easier to spread interviews, presentations or role plays over a few days. You could give candidates a timed log in to complete written tasks and fix a number of group exercise dates. 3. Use appropriate technology Look at free resources such as Zoom, Google Docs, Microsoft Teams, and Google Forms, Webex which, with a bit of work, can be used quite effectively or perhaps you have collaborative software used elsewhere in the business for example HighQ. The facilities you are looking for are video, chat and the ability to share and upload documents. The chat facility enables candidates to post questions before exercises and is particularly useful if trying to run a group exercise – fewer interruptions before or after the exercise. Even better is to invest in a paperless/digital assessment centre provider who will give you tech support and has the experience to advise you. They can automate timetables for you, provide the security you need for materials and provide assessors with the facility to rate/score candidates within the system, thus saving you time on chasing up assessor notes. We have had great experiences working with TopScore who as an independent digital assessment platform provider, enables you to use your current materials. Your candidates, assessors and facilitators will all have their own logins and can securely access all the relevant content as they would face to face. Before launching an assessment centre for real, test what you are using ensuring assessors know how to use the tools and have a contingency plan for when things don’t work. 4. Maintain the integrity of documents Whatever technology you use, the integrity of your materials is key. A breach of data is a costly thing, the sharing of documents could mean a new set of materials could be needed, although, if the candidates only have the questions and not the answers you may think this is unnecessary. You can limit time and access to candidate’s briefs and provide unique logins to help prevent sharing. In our experience a timed access is always best so candidates can only see the materials for the time it takes to complete and submit the exercise. Also ensure the tool you are using does not allow candidates to download, or copy and paste content from the assessment materials – who knows where they could end up? Some employers ask candidates to have their video facility switched on while they are completing all exercises, you will need to decide what message you want to give to candidates about employee trust. With a platform like TopScore, you can embed the link to your chosen video conferencing tool for assessors and candidates to click and access. 5. Review your candidate materials Interviews, roleplays or presentation exercises can be converted into a video experience with minor changes to materials. You are likely to need to adjust your instructions for the candidates and give greater detail on how answers should be delivered. We have found the written exercise works well as an electronic activity. You may choose to ask candidates to email you a response by a deadline having made a candidate brief available, read-only for a certain period of time. Using a platform like TopScore means assessors can access written answers as soon as they are completed; and scores can be inputted straight away. 6. Consider your competencies We have seen a need to consider the strengths or competencies being assessed when moving to a virtual assessment centre - some will be harder to assess than face to face. You are going to need to consider what you are assessing and how you assess it and decide if this is still fair and reasonable for candidates. The group exercise needs most consideration in our experience. If you decide this is to go ahead, it can run if you have all candidates and assessors on a shared video meeting, the assessors with their video switched off so candidates can’t see and interact with them. This is the exercise that we know will doubtless need changes. 7. Make time for a thorough washup The washup is still a key part of the assessment process even when exercises have been undertaken virtually. Use screen sharing technology for washup grids and check out our top tips on running virtual meetings to help you run an efficient decision-making meeting. With the assessors working remotely, you’ll need to consider a way to collect all their scores and feedback to be used in the wash-up – the TopScore platform automates this process, which we find very efficient. 8. Retain fairness and inclusion Of course, retaining fairness and inclusion remain a priority. You will have to consider your candidate pool and make sure not to disadvantage any group - from those who may not have access to the technology to those who may find the online interactions hard to adjust to. If you have tools that track social mobility you should utilise this data carefully at wash up stage to see if this is an issue and act accordingly. If you need help and want to discuss, why not get in touch.