Assessment Centre with Online Business Simulation

What is an assessment centre?

Recruiters often use assessment centres to find out how job candidates perform in particular situations. An assessment centre is often used in the second round of candidate selection. It allows recruiters to provide modelled, realistic scenarios to the candidates to test their reactions and work performance before hiring them – things which are not easily measured with traditional interviews or tests.

Assessment centre is an event or process, not a location. It is usually made up of different types of “examinations” in the form of case studies, presentations, role plays, simulations, group sessions and tray exercises. Recruiters can assess any quality or skill that is desired in the vacant position. These activities are usually performed by a many participants in one location, and it helps employers to recruit the best candidates possible, as they can evaluate how the participants react to time pressure, how they manage conflicts in teams and how they communicate with each other.

Using an Online Business simulation for assessment purposes

During the assessment process recruiters can use business scenarios where they can challenge participants with lifelike tasks, and support candidates’ decision making by offering background stories. At our platform we provide different business scenarios, and our partners can choose from a variety of case studies, selecting the one that best fits the assessment centre’s needs and focus.

With our simulation platform, recruiters can place participants into roles where they must adapt to complex situations and make difficult decisions. Recruiters can even provide situations where participants must encounter some sort of confrontation where they need to negotiate with other team members.

 

Tray exercises also provide an interactive way to challenge candidates in the fields of planning, organising and communication. Tray exercises are based on the principle of prioritizing tasks and working through them in a given time interval. These tasks usually include answering emails and correspondence or planning and organizing, but the simulation offers other improvisational tasks like managing difficult market events and crises.

How can our Online Business simulation help the assessment process?

Our platform can be part of the assessment program – an important and comprehensive exercise. You can start the assessment by explaining the rules, introducing the platform and the tasks that are ahead of the participants. Tasks can be based on case studies, and they can also be supplemented with individual challenges for participants (which might be contrary to the team’s goals to make it more interesting).
The suggested length of a simulation for larger groups is 2-4 hours, for smaller groups the ideal duration is about two hours.

Spicing it up with external participants

Supervisors can also take party by playing roles in a particular team, but they don’t necessarily need to reveal their identity. Anonym role players can make the simulation even more interesting (or difficult) by inserting thoughts, disagreements, or that distract the team from their goals.

Who should attend?

The simulation can be used to assess recent graduates as the simulation itself requires no special knowledge and experience. The simulation can just as easily be used for participants in management positions, as the difficulty of the simulation is scalable.

Number of participants can vary as the simulation platform is also flexible in this regard. The suggested number of participants in assessment centres is between 2 and 16 persons, in teams of four. For each participant it is recommended to delegate one or two supervisors who can assess their individual performances and skills.

Suggested outline:

Registration, presentations specific to the Assessment Centre, introduction to the coming tasks and tests.

After everything is in place, recruiters can start assessing the candidates, which includes a life simulation. Our platform can be configured to the assessment centre’s exact requirements. After an introduction of the Assessment Centre point of view, participants can learn more about the simulation.

• Introduction of the simulation platform, explanation of the rules
• Setting targets for teams and/or individuals
• Participation in a simulation, which may include added assignments (e.g. presentations, explanations, reviews)
• Assessment of participants’ performances; feedback about strengths and weaknesses

Focus topics:

• Adaption to new situations
• Co-operational skills and teamwork
• Communication and interpersonal skills
• Analytic skills
• Language skills
• Ethics
• Conflict management, negotiation and leadership
• Performance under time pressure
  
  

Why is it unique?

• The simulation can be configured with almost any kind of starting positions
• Time pressure can be high or low, as desired, and it can be adjusted while the simulation is in progress
• Unlike the other approaches, the SimTeam simulation is difficult to predict because a large number of parameters can be adjusted. Participants cannot prepare for its challenges, and the AC can always offer new scenarios.
• The simulation is available in nine languages (English, German, Russian, Estonian, Slovak, Romanian, Polish, Turkish and Hungarian).

Comparison to tray exercises:

• Teamwork can be introduced or approached in different ways
• Decisions have an immediate effect
• It can be customized with in-tray elements