An assessment center puts candidates through a series of group and individual exercises de- signed to simulate the conditions of a given job and determines if they have the skills and abilities necessary to perform that job. It does this by bringing out the candidate’s behavior relevant to the job, while being observed by a group of assessors. The candidates’ personalities and aptitudes are determined by a variety of techniques including interviews, in-box surveys, situational judgment questions, group exercises, presentations, examinations and logical and numerical reasoning tests.
These procedures help to insure that judgments made are relatively free of the many forms of rater bias, are reliable, and can serve as the basis for meaningful predictions of a candidate’s po- tential.