Assessment Centre Exercises

Assessment Centre Exercises are designed to reveal your employment potential. Trained observers, usually psychologists, at assessment centers measure you against a set of competencies and each exercise is planned to assess one or more of the key skill or competency areas.

Group Exercises

With assessment centre exercises in groups you need to have to the right attitude from the start.

Group exercises are set to test the candidates' teamwork ability and to see who come out as the leaders and who the followers are. You must be positive and enthusiastic and assume that your objective is to 'win' against the other members of the group.

Try to be actively engaged at all times and most importantly, be yourself - not who you think the assessors are looking for.

There will usually be between 8 - 12 candidates and you should make a strenuous effort to socialize and get along with the other people there. Whereas you are taking part in a competitive activity, meaning you want to win the job, the assessment centre itself is not a competition.

How you interact with your fellow candidates will be part of the assessment.

In-Tray Exercises

Depending upon the nature of the job you’re after this may involve some paperwork of the type you would encounter. For example in a finance role you may be asked to “read and summarize a set of quarterly figures as if you are going to give a briefing to the regional manager”.

Listen carefully to the briefing and if you are unclear about anything, ask. It may be useful to have a question ready for these sessions but make sure that the answer has not already been covered in the introduction. Asking badly chosen questions just to get noticed will not impress the selectors.

Role Playing Exercises

Imagine that you are called in to the boss’s office to explain your latest ideas for a new project...

In this task individuals will be assigned various roles, each taking turns at being the employee or the boss. There may be a situation with an unhappy customer or other scene from your prospective new role.

The scenario played out will generally be related to either a typical day on the job or a particularly stressful, awkward situation which must be dealt with in a disciplined manner and display quick thinking ability.

Presentation Exercises

Presentation exercises are common as part of assessment centre exercises. Very few people enjoy public speaking but it is a discipline which can be learned and is very useful throughout your career. If you can effectively address a room of candidates, your self-assurance cannot fail to impress. You should be provided with sufficient preparation time so make a few notes.

Although not strictly an assessment centre exercise, what is sometimes called "trial by reception" involves social or informal events. You could be asked to meet a variety of people, including other candidates, the selectors, external stakeholders (especially for public appointments) and senior management.

This will be presented as an opportunity for you to find out about the organization and to ask questions in an informal setting. Although these procedures may appear informal and not part of the true assessment process you should remember to behave in a way that reflects well on you.

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