DEVELOPMENT CENTER (DC)

When recruiting for a vacancy internally, it is often difficult to decide who might be the best candidate for the position, for instance: who would perform best in a leadership role? We design the exercises of our Development Centres according to the requirements of our Clients, ensuring that the critical competencies of their organisation’s existing competency framework are measurable with the planned tasks. At the Development Center we propose various individual, paired and group situations to colleagues, that they are unlikely to have encountered in their previous position, which allows us to gain a lot of new information regarding their potential performance in the future role.

When should Development Centres be used?

• Internal recruitment and selection
• Promotion
• In preparation of organisational development
• Competence assessment

Advantages of the method:

• Tailored: candidates can be observed in situation exercises that best simulate the future position’s requirements
• Objective: all candidates are assessed along the same previously defined criteria and besides our consultants, decision makers from within the organisation can also observe the candidates
• Time efficient: practically any number of candidates can be assessed in one day
• Multidimensional and complex: candidates evidence their aptitude and skills across several different situations and tasks and are assessed by several observers
• Active: candidates are active and respond spontaneously as there are no single ‘good’ or ‘bad’ answers and because they are unaware of the exact assessment criteria, they cannot ‘practice’ in advance and therefore respond naturally according to their personality.

Tools:

• Group tasks (e.g. group decision, group project planning)
• Role-play and paired exercises (e.g. negotiation, conflict with client or colleague)
• Presentation tasks
• Short case studies
• Psychological tests (personality tests, skills tests)
• Psychological interview