Moving to a Virtual Assessment Center: Tips and Know-hows

What had been going through a steady evolution since its origin in World War II, the Assessment center is one way that consulting psychologists help their employers in the selection and development of effective managers. It saw a transformation owing to the technological revolution and the emergence of globalization, leading to virtual assessment centers. 

These Virtual Assessment Centers have arrived at a pivotal point in their evolution – the current global climate has created a surge in the queries about how organizations can move from traditional forms of assessment to a virtual assessment center mechanism and have a digitally enabled means to conduct employee training, candidate assessments and leadership hiring and succession planning. 

L&D & HR professionals have to make quick transitions to make possible the delivery of concise learning and assessment modules virtually in a systematic manner that mimics how they would do it traditionally. 

Sustaining growth of your organization is directly proportional to having high-quality leadership. For those who are weighing their options to adopt a virtual assessment center mechanism, here are some things to consider to help you ensure a successful platform to move forward effectively, in a robust manner. 

1. Not lose sight of Current Talent Management Practices
   Whether you are the consultant, the assessor, the employer, or the manager – it is important to facilitate your unique way to assess candidates regardless of the candidate’s ability to be physically present, travel or interact among each other. It is critical to ensure that the candidates are aware of the activities at the start of the assessment journey that outlines the activities that will run throughout the day. Ensure timely updates and reminders or automate the process with workflows.
2. Choosing the right technology
   Traditional assessment centers can be extremely expensive and time, effort, and labour intensive. Moving this system to a virtual enablement platform needs to be executed with a technology that mitigates resource constraints and makes assessments easier and more effective. Choosing the right technology that brings all the tools, platforms and resources to be used seamlessly becomes important.Technology that stands by Business simulation, live proctoring, 1-to-1 or group interviews, monitored situational tests, psychometric tests, switching between platforms like Skype, Google Hangouts, Zoom – all while ensuring information security and aversion of malpractices.
3. Routine check-ins –
   The solution should enable routine check-ins by an admin to ensure everything goes as smoothly as planned and all errors are looked at well in advance if the candidates reach out in case of an emergency or discontinuity. This gives you a chance to make sure your candidates are in a relaxed and comfortable environment, where they will not be disturbed.It would be ideal to set up a mechanism that facilitates offline capability for any downtime due to network connectivity issues.The chosen platform should also facilitate quick fixes and updates without compromising on-going candidate assessment activities.
4. Enterprise-grade security
   The digital assessment center employed should not come in the way of organizational information security. It is recommended to use certified platforms that are compliant to prevailing standards and also to your organization’s policies.
5. Save you and the candidate some time
   With manual interventions between sequential activities reduced, the time to completion also reduces. It is suggested to have 2 to 3 activities planned on the virtual assessment center in advance and maximize accurate evaluations and set up automation rules to perform some evaluations to cognitive ability tests or situational analysis, to instantly measure the candidate’s suitability for a specific role.
6. Robust in nature
   The virtual assessment tools deployed should be able to support dynamicity – changing sequence of assessments based on the performance in current activities, switching roles of the candidates, role-playing, live proctoring of the candidates, switching between assessors by changing assignment rules to avoid manipulations or discrepancies in the performance measurement. Another important aspect to consider is the scalability of the assessment center for varying pool-sizes of candidates.
7. Scalability
   It would be a smart move to design your virtual assessment center in a way that can grow as the end-users grow – an exercise being conducted with 5 candidates should function in the same manner for 20 candidates with standardized rules to control assessments and candidate responses.
8. Integrate and get all systems in sync
   Think of all the different channels through which your information and communications flow. Think of all the different kinds of assessments you might be conducting and how you could assess the traits using technology. The virtual assessment center will be a combination of all the supporting tools to effectively measure candidates abilities and take informed decisions.
9. Role plays, cognitive abilities, psychometric tests With your virtual assessment center supporting various assessment modules, certain online assessments like an online psychometric assessment can give you deeper insights into the candidate traits using which you can plan the consequent assessments like a roleplay activity or situational judgement analysis, personal interview over the web or others. Execute impact-driven and highly tailored assessments to know more about your candidates with the right use of technology.

DronaHQ is a seasoned veteran facilitating organizations with L&D technology solutions built and deployed at speed. The team’s rich experience has enabled them to offer organizations ready to use modules for candidate training and development that can be used as-is or customized for their own requirements and set up a custom virtual assessment center. 

In view of COVID-19, an Leadership Training and Assessment organization moved all of their operations online in a span of 15 days to continue their operations on a global scale. The platform sees HR executives, innovation teams, L&D professionals, consultants, recruiters from all across the industries building no-code solutions for their needs.

In an effort to support teams who are looking for technologies to move their business online and ensure business continuity, DronaHQ is offering guidance and ready solutions to successfully move your processes to a digital landscape.

For more information on how to set up your Virtual Assessment Centers, drop us a message in the chatbox below!