You should never drink alcohol at these events even if pressured to.  Information sessions are the time to shut up and listen unless you have timely well thought out questions (which are really important, so don’t miss the opportunity).

Don’t just speak so someone will notice you, because it will probably have the opposite effects on the assessment center exercise.

As we discussed earlier, assessment center exercises usually include tests and like the name says, exercises.  This is all done to gauge the skills and real world work potential of prospective employees.

Assessment center exercises will also include group work and an interview.

All designed to measure the skillset most likely to be successful actually in the job, such as, customer focus, flexibility, challenge and results focus.

Group Discussions are often leaderless.

In this situation, a group of potential employees meet and discuss issues related to the job for which they are applying.  As they talk, they are observed and evaluated by behavioral experts.

They are evaluated in terms of inter personal communication and whether or not they display any leadership skills.  Sitting back during a group discussion is usually not evaluated well., whilst carefully pro-active interventions will do very well for you indeed!

During Role Playing, job applicants act out scenarios they might encounter if hired as an employee of the company.

There is one person who is a trained scene player and they interact with employees in an improvised scene.

The potential employees are evaluated on how they react during these improvised sessions and what kind of skills they project.

Watch out for the next post in this series, “Pitfalls Of The Assessment Center Recruitment Method“, with you in a couple of days!