Customer Reviews

A Practical Guide to Assessment Centres and Selection Methods: Measuring Competency for Recruitment and Development

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This book is for a subset of those professionals involved in hiring and employee development. If you need to use assessments (both psychometric and assessment activities) this book is designed as a "how to" guide for you. The author, Ian Taylor, is an occupational psychologist and is chartered with the British Psychological Society and is a member of the chartered Institute of Personnel and Development. As I read through the book I was struck by how much he favors assessment activities over any kind of testing. Maybe there is more employment opportunity in training people how to run these activities well than in creating and selling written psychometric exams. By the way, the term `centre' is used in the way we Americans might use the word suite or battery (as in a battery of tests).

Half of the book talks about the assessment process and how to administer them. The second half of the book provides a series of activities you can use for selection and employee development. These activities are also provided on the accompanying CD in PDF files.

This is not for general readers, but may be just the ticket for the right HR professional.

Reviewed by Craig Matteson, Ann Arbor, MI

Poor hiring decisions take a toll on a company. Increasingly, businesses are implementing a wider variety of assessment tools to achieve better results in their hiring and promotion processes. Occupational psychologist Ian Taylor shows how assessment centers (or suites) can help your firm differentiate the "good" performers from the "average" ones, which is crucial knowledge for building a more productive workforce. Taylor presents several methods for designing a solid "competence framework" to structure your assessments, including one useful seven-step system. He helpfully provides sample frameworks and activities that you can use or adapt in your own assessment centers. Although some of his information and guidelines are specific to organizations in the U.K., getAbstract recommends this manual to any human resources professional who wants to create a well-planned assessment center.