Assessment Centre: Evaluation and Reflection

This document discusses the use of assessment centres in the selection process, focusing on the proposed itinerary and assessment techniques. It explores the role of interviews and group activities in assessing candidates and highlights the importance of personnel specification. The document also provides insights into the assessment centre process used by Merrill Lynch for hiring a human resource manager.

Assessment centre
evaluation and reflection

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................3
Proposed itinerary for assessment centres..............................................................................3
Assessment Techniques..........................................................................................................4
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................8
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................9
Appendix........................................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
The use of assessment centres as a method of selection of an employee from the pool of
candidatures available with an organisation is gaining lot of importance in the present scenario
and with the changing times it has grown with the technique of outsourcing used by companies
(Duncan, 2018). Therefore, in the present report also there is a discussion of how an investment
company that is Merrill Lynch is making use of some of such assessment centres for filling of
the vacancy for the post of a human resource manager in the HR department of their organisation
with the help of such assessment centres.
MAIN BODY
Proposed itinerary for assessment centres
There is a need for itinerary for the assessment centre so that the chosen technique can be
justified.
In the present scenario, there are certain steps that have to be followed so that a broad view can
be getting for understanding of the overall process of selection of right candidate for the vacant
post:
 Inviting of the applications: In the initial step there has to be inviting of applications for
this there is identification of areas from where prospective candidates can be made aware
about the vacancy in the organisation by Merrill Lynch for this there is a requirement of
use of newspaper advertisements and websites such as Linked In from where people are
looking for some job opportunities (Dany, . and Torchy, 2017).
 Use of Personnel specification: There is sue of Personnel specification for the process of
inviting applicants so that they can be made aware about the overall profile and the key
requirement that the organisation Merrill Lynch is looking in their HR manager.
 Scrutiny of applications: After there will scrutiny of all the applicants that have come
and in this process the most unsuitable applications will be rejected that is not at all
according to the compulsory requirement in terms of experiences, present level of skills
and graduate experience of employees (Nolan, and Garavan, 2016). So, there is a need to
reject such applications at this particular stage only.

 Inviting the candidates for selection process: After there has been proper scrutiny of
the applicants, those applications apart from the rejected ones will be invites for the
purpose of interview and for all the procedure of selection of a candidate.
 Day of interview: at the day of interview all the applicants will be given a specific
timing of 9:00 am to reach to the specific address and details of all the necessary
documents that is required to be carried with them. All this information will be sent to
them with the help of personalised mail.
There will be further a personal round of interview in which there will be two rounds one with
the human resource department and another one will be the technical round to assess the
candidate on a detailed basis Chowhan, Pries. and Mann, 2017). After this the candidates will be
sent back and within a time period of two days they will be reverted back about whether they
have been selected or not this information will be again sent via mail.
The selected candidates will be sent their job offer letter once they give a confirmation about
their acceptance of job offer letter and whether they will be joining on the mentioned date on the
job letter (Baileyand et. al., 2018).
With this the overall process of assessment centre gets completed as there has been selection
of right candidates and the most crucial role played in all through this process is by the Personnel
specification that has actually helped in making it utmost clarity that what are the key
requirement those candidates who are not fit for the profile do not apply that leads to lot of
saving in terms of time and cost by the organisation.
Assessment Techniques
Assessment centres is defined as one of the selection techniques that is used in companies to
measure knowledge, skills as well as abilities of an individual. One of the reason of an
organisation having assessment centres is to collect relevant data or information about a person
capabilities and skills to perform a given task (McDowell, 2019). The selection centres is
traditionally used for bulk and large-scale recruitment exercises. This method can be expensive
but it is cost-effective for the organisation when selecting and recruiting large number of
individuals. In order to select the best candidate for the vacant position, this assessment uses
various techniques such as interview, personality tests, group activity and many more. All these
techniques help an organisation to acquire talent and enhance their efficiency level. The different
assessment techniques used is given below in relation to the chosen company:

Interview: It is defined as one of the suitable assessment technique in order to select the
best candidate for the organisation. By the assistance of interview, employer or recruiter get to
know about the communication as well as presentation skill of the candidate. In addition to this,
the recruiter get an in-depth knowledge about the qualification and experience along with role in
performing this in an effective manner. Interview is mainly a two-way process where the
discussion is taking place among the interviewer and interviewee. Herein, the recruiter asked
questions to the candidate which is related to their backgroung, qualification, experience, skills,
capabilities, job roles, training and so on. All these questions are answered by the interviewee in
a proper manner and on this basis the candidate is selected for the next rounds or for the job,
depend on the selection structure of companies (Patterson, 2018). It is important to have
interview, which involve assessing of behaviour, attributes, and skills by behaviour based
questions. Moreover, it is essential for managers and human resource manager of company to ask
situational based questions as it will help in identifying the behaviour and attitude of individual
in different situations. It is essential to include situational, behavioural, knowledge based and
skill based question to be asked in the interview by the candidate. There are mainly two types of
interviewing techniques which are as follows:
Structured interview: This type of interview allows recruiter to ask the similar question to
all the candidates in order to gain an understanding about experience and communication skills.
It is determine as a most widely-used method of talent-assessment that help in selecting best
candidate for the company.
Unstructured interview: In this type of interview, there is no formal questions and consist
of more relaxed environment as compare to structured interview. Unstructured interview offer
more freedom to employer to take interview in a specific direction. In addition to this, it also
allow candidate an opportunity to express itself in a more creative as well as effective manner.
Different types of interview
Telephone interview: At the initial stage, most of the companies using telephone interview
before inviting candidate for the face-to-face interview (Ross, Nilsen and Radford, 2019). By the
assistance of this, recruiter get to know about the confidence level and communication skill of
interviewee. In addition to this, interviewee also get a chance to prepare more for the face-to-face
interview.

Face-to-face interview: It is a meeting between the candidate and the interviewee in a proper
manner. In addition to this, the interviewee get deep knowledge about experience and role
perform by candidate (Jessel, 2018)
Panel interview: Herein, the number of individual sitting together as a panel with one the
chairperson and recruiter. It is determine that this type of interview is mainly adopt by the public
sector.
Sequential interview: In this type of the interview, there is a sequence of question is
prepared by the employer and then asked by the candidates in a proper manner.
From the above discussion, using face-to-face interview by managers of Merrill Lynch is
suitable and effective. This assist manager to gain an understanding about communication skills
and confidence level of a person.
Group activity:- It is define as an activity which is performed by more than two members in a
proper manner. It is basically a task given to the candidate with other members who are coming
for the interview for the vacant position. By the assistance of this, the recruiter get to know about
the team building skills of candidate and how actively they can work with other members. It is
important for a candidate to have team building skills as it help them to easily cope up with other
people and attain common goal within a time period (Froschauer and Lueger, 2020). The
recruiter develop the teams and assigned the work or task to the person. These activities is
mainly associate with the job that they are going to perform in order to judge their capabilities.
One of the benefit to candidate about the group activity is it can make use of skills of high rank
candidate to achieve the common task whereas one of the disadvantage of group activity is an
individual contributions is not counted as the whole team work is counted and marks is given
accordingly. This assessment technique is appropriate when group activity holds a minor part of
overall process of selection. Group activity is easiest method to execute and does not require ant
ore work from the projects.
By the assistance of group activity, an employer get to know about team building and
problem-solving skill of the candidates which is important for the organisation to implement
activities and to achieve targets in an effective manner (Syrett and Cooke, 2018). There are many
other assessment techniques such as Individual activity, presentations, personality tests, written
tests and many more. From all these techniques, interview is one of the effective and suitable
assessment technique, which help in interacting with people and gain knowledge about various

skills of candidate such as communication and interaction skills, interpersonal skills, conflict
handling skill and many more. In order to select candidate for the post of Human resource
manager, Merrill Lynch can make use of interview assessment technique, which is beneficial as
well as suitable for the company.

CONCLUSION
From the above discussion, it is analysed that having an assessment centre in an organisation
help in gaining understanding about skills, competencies and knowledge of an individual in
performing the task. The job description is developed in order to attract people to apply for the
vacant position and hire talent for the company. In addition to this, it is essential for mangers to
analyse the communication skill and intellectual skills of a people as it is one of most important
skill required to perform the task in a proper manner. There are various assessment techniques
and tools used by company in order to select the effective as well as talented candidate such as
interview, presentation, group activity, personality test, individual activity and many more.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Bailey, C. and et. al., 2018. Strategic human resource management. Oxford University Press.
Chowhan, J., Pries, F. and Mann, S., 2017. Persistent innovation and the role of human resource
management practices, work organization, and strategy. Journal of Management &
Organization. 23(3). pp.456-471.
Dany, F. and Torchy, V., 2017. Recruitment and selection in Europe Policies, practices and
methods 1. In Policy and practice in European human resource management (pp. 68-
88). Routledge.
Nolan, C.T. and Garavan, T.N., 2016. Human resource development in SMEs: a systematic
review of the literature. International Journal of Management Reviews. 18(1) . pp.85-
107.
Ross, C.S., Nilsen, K. and Radford, M. L., 2019. Conducting the reference interview. American
Library Association.
Patterson, J., and et. al., 2018. Essential skills in family therapy: From the first interview to
termination. Guilford Publications.
McDowell, G. L., 2019. Cracking the coding interview: 189 Programming Questions and
Solutions. CareerCup.
Froschauer, U. and Lueger, M., 2020. Das qualitative Interview: Zur Praxis interpretativer
Analyse sozialer Systeme. UTB GmbH.
Jessel, J., and et. al., 2018. Achieving socially significant reductions in problem behavior
following the interview‐informed synthesized contingency analysis: A summary of 25
outpatient applications. Journal of Applied Behavior Analysis, 51(1), pp.130-157.
Duncan, L., and et. al., 2018. Psychometric evaluation of the Mini International
Neuropsychiatric Interview for Children and Adolescents (MINI-KID). Psychological
assessment, 30(7), p.916.
Syrett, H. C. and Cooke, J.G. eds., 2018. Interview in Weehawken: The Burr-Hamilton Duel as
Told in the Original Documents. Wesleyan University Press.

Appendix
Personnel Specification
 Post: HR manager
 Department: HR department
 Key: It denotes what are the key evidence requirements in the process of recruitment.
 (A) : Application form, (I) : Interview, (R) : Role
Attributes Essential Desirable
Qualification &
Experience
 Basic management degree
with specialisation in Human
resource.
 Professional diploma of
minimum period of
six ,months
 Experience of working as a
human resource manager on a
organisation for minimum
time period of 1 year.
 Experience of more than 1
year
 Advanced courses in
computer applications
Skills or
Abilities
 Interpersonal skills,
Organisational skills and
communication skills
 Computer operating skills
like excel, outlook etc.
 Experience of leading and
managing a team or a
particular project
 Analysis and making timely
assessment of anticipated
risk
 Ability to guide the
subordinates and follow
superiors in a effective
manner.