5 Tips to Building a Winning Digital Remote Assessment Centre Experience
As the world embraces remote working, how we recruit and conduct assessment centres has changed.
Before the onset of COVID-19, concepts like social distancing were unfamiliar to the majority of us.
However, as we navigate through over half a year in this COVID-influenced environment, it’s evident that our lifestyles, work routines, and social habits will undergo lasting transformations. As global economies start to rebound, the repercussions of these changes on organizational recruitment practices are becoming evident.
Historically, for roles in high demand, Assessment Centres or “Group Interviews” served as a cornerstone for volume recruitment.
Yet, with a growing inclination and necessity to uphold social distancing or reduce face-to-face engagements, global organizations are pivoting to fully digital assessment centers, powered by modern technology.
The top 5 tips to facilitating a winning remote Assessment Centre:
1. Adjust all assessment centre activities to remote
The first thing to consider when moving to remote assessment centres is what adjustment or changes you might need to make to the activities you run with the applicants. Group interviews (either 1:1 or 1:2) are generally unaffected, but you will need to remove group activities which involve materials (i.e. lego or straws). Group activities which tend to be most effective are:
- role-play activities
- problem-solving activities
- case studies, and
- presentations.
2. Allow for tech issues when setting up your digital assessment centre environment
While technology will be your best friend in the transition to remote assessment centres, you won’t be able to control all aspects of this. For example, assessors or applicants might have an unexpected issue with their computer or unstable internet connection. Don’t let this deter you, as the cases are rare – but be prepared for how you will respond or how you may need to adapt to minimise disruptions and keep the assessment centre on-track.
3. Schedule your digital assessment centre in detail and well in advance
Scheduling won’t be anything new to seasoned Group Interviewers. The difference now is you need to be scheduling a few additional factors to make for a smooth day, and engaging applicant experience.
Consider scheduling your day in blocks:
1 – Introduction & roll call
2 – Interviews
3 – Group activities
4 – Wash up and calibration
Tip! You will need multiple video conference links and breakout rooms prepared and scheduled for each of these.
4. Practice makes for the perfect assessment centre
Most of our customers have been doing assessment centres for years, but doing them remotely is a different game.
Your best bet is to do a ‘dry run’ with your assessors, even if only to walk through the process, schedule and technology – that way, on the day, there are no surprises!
5. Take advantage of technology that specialises in digital assessment centres
Last but by no means least, take advantage of technology to do all the heavy lifting for you. Most organisations will have a video conference or collaboration platform which works effectively with multiple ‘rooms’ and large groups. If not, we recommended Zoom, as it has one of the highest video compressions rates ensuring the best possible experience for applicants and assessors. After this, you will need an assessment centre platform, such as LiveInterview, which allows you to manage your remote assessment centres without the need for spreadsheets, hours of admin, and painful calibration discussions.
Want to know more about how we can help you make your remote assessment centres a success? Click here to get in touch.
Make your digital assessment centres easier and fairer with LiveInterview
It is for these reasons that Sapia has launched LiveInterview – the app that specialises in making group interviews:
1. Easier to organise
2. A pleasure to be there
3. Yield better results – especially considering all attendees were preselected using FirstInterview!
4. Totally fair and equitable
5. Consistent and standardised
6. Easy to administer. No record-keeping needed anymore, ever
7. Data-driven objective decision making plus it delivers a better hiring yield.
Watch the video here:
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