Training for Assessors

Running an Assessment and Development Centre eats up time and money, and the quality of its results rests heavily on the people doing the judging. Assessors, resource people and role players who have not been trained well can skew outcomes considerably. Keeping their performance consistent means briefing them thoroughly and training them properly, and this manual offers a hands-on toolkit with what is needed to do exactly that.

The argument is simple: the data a centre produces is only as sound as the assessors gathering it. Untrained assessors tend to lose objectivity, misread or poorly note what they witness, and reach mistaken judgements. They are also often unequipped to give useful feedback to candidates they have misjudged. Author Lindy Strudwick presents a set of activities designed to bring assessors up to a suitable standard quickly and at modest cost.

The first three parts concentrate on behavioural assessment, broken into five steps: observing, recording, classifying, summarising and evaluating. Each step comes with exercises to learn and practise the relevant technique, and a series of mock simulations lets trainees combine everything they have learned in realistic conditions. Part Four turns to resource persons and role players, a group that training programmes often neglect.

The benefits reach past the centre itself. Managers who serve as assessors and go through the process carry those abilities back to their own workplaces, where they apply to managing and developing staff. The book suits anyone who runs, or intends to run, assessment and development centres.

Strudwick works as an independent consultant focused on these centres. She started out in financial services, where she held line management posts, before moving into human resources and a range of generalist roles. Since 1985 she has taken part in centres in several capacities, from candidate to assessor, role player and resource person, and eventually as a designer and manager. Her line management background informs a practical method that she applies with large corporations and smaller independent organisations alike.