Assessment Centers (ACs) work shop

What are Assessment Centers (ACs)?

  The assessment centres are series of exercises being designed for testing skills that are not readily assessable from an interview. They are usually the final step in the recruitment process. Therefore, it is important to understand how ACs actually work and get some experiences or trainings before applying the job.

  The complete ACs are normally consist of:

• Competency tests

• Psychometric tests

• In tray exercise

• Case studies

• Presentations

• Group exercises

• Interview

• Social events

Group task and mock interview

  The actual ACs will normally last half a day or the whole day depending on the tasks given by the employers.

During the ACs workshop in October, the fist group task given was building a protective structure to prevent the egg from damaging when being dropped from certain height in a limited time and with limited resources (45 minutes).

  The second part was a rotational interview, and everyone was given 5 minutes to play as interviewer and interviewee. Feedbacks were given to everyone in the group.

Personal thoughts

 The ACs was a brand-new experience to me, and it was interesting to learn the process of ACs and experience different exercises. However, it was also a stressful event. For instant, the first group task (egg challenge) required an efficient and orderly cooperation in the team, because the time and resources were both limited. While, it was hard to do when the task required lots of brainstorm and discussion and especially the team was formed by six strangers, without a team leader, it was quite hard to put all ideas together and allocate different works to group members.

  The interview was also one of my weakness points, I felt quite challenging to talk logically in front of multiple interviewees in the beginning, and it was also not easy to think and give an appropriate question to candidates. Fortunately, after few rounds of training, I started to get several skills on answering questions. For instant, when I was given questions that I have no clues to start, I could always start with something that I am good at, such as personal interests or experiences, and try to get some more time for thinking.

 Also, I found the STAR technique being introduced in previous lecture is very helpful, because it provides a good frame to give a well-structured and detailed interview answer.

The STAR technique is composed of:

• Situation

• Task

• Action

• Results

 Overall, form this valuable experience, I learnt the basic process of ACs and built the confidence from the experiences and the positive feedback form my group members and observers. I think it will helpful for my future job seeking or research position applying.

Video about how to prepare for an assessment center.