The digital Assessment Center, the new recruitment revolution

Recognized as the most reliable method for assessing skills, the Assessment Center is now at a technological turning point, in connection with the digitalization of the world of work.

The new digital players in Assessment are beginning to emerge. Trends are emerging and the assessment of skills seems to be on the verge of a revolution.

But is digital technology compatible with an evaluation method that is based on a simulation?

Between a very operational approach that has made its strength and the potential offered by new technologies, this article offers you a presentation of the new tech-oriented Assessment Center models.

1 - What is a “traditional” Assessment Center?

Arrived in France in the 70s, this evaluation method was immediately intended to be very rational.

For 50 years, the objective of an Assessment Center has been to assess and identify the skills of a candidate, in real conditions, that is to say through simulations.

After all, how can we assess a candidate's stress management or management abilities, other than in a context and a scenario?

This is the problem that the Assessment Centers have come to solve, namely: How to assess skills that are difficult to assess (such as soft skills)? to better recruit.

In this sense, an Assessment session traditionally takes place in person. Several candidates are invited to carry out exercises, in connection with the position in question.

We often talk about tests.”In basket“where candidates will for example receive emails, calls, documents or invitations based on an internal employee in a similar position. The purpose of this exercise is to assess how they prioritize these items.

Illustration of a test in basket

On the company side, the evaluation is carried out by several recruiters and consultants (the involvement of managers is also common), in order to objectify the evaluation and obtain a quality benchmark.

2 - What form does the digitalization of Assessment Centers take?

We come to the important subject of this article, digitalization.

As far as Assessment Centers are concerned, it corresponds to the posting of psychometric tests online.

Very often, these tests take the form of questionnaires, whether multiple choice or not, to be carried out by the candidates with a timed time.

Not very immersive, these tests, which came on the market about twenty years ago, are largely based on “declarative” content and lose the very concrete dimension of the scenarios that companies love.

On the other hand, new players closer to the initial objective of Assessment Centers have emerged, such as Yuzu.

For these actors, scenarios are once again at the center of the evaluation process, thanks in particular to the arrival of Serious Games where Video Games are used to immerse candidates and obtain more reliable results.

Image taken from an Assessment Yuzu scenario

We can then imagine globally reproducing everything that can be evaluated in person such as interactions, behaviors or actions through fictional scenarios.

3 - What are the advantages of a digital Assessment Center?

Based on the latest tools mentioned in the previous paragraph, the advantages are multiple.

First, logistics are greatly simplified. When interviews take place in person, companies must monopolize several employees to welcome and assess candidates, synchronize the agendas of everyone involved, and dedicate a location. With digital technology, evaluations can be carried out asynchronously, saving businesses a lot of agility and therefore money.

Digital technology also makes it possible to get off the beaten track and very “corporate” worlds. It's a good way to find out How to recruit in a more original way. While traditionally we evaluated candidates in worlds that are very close to their future offices or workstations, by constraint with the places available for the company more than by choice, the only limit in situations with digital technology is that of our imagination.

Why use an office or a factory as an evaluation framework when you can send candidates into the jungle, in the ocean or even in the middle of the desert?

Finally, digital technology makes it possible to reduce certain cognitive biases and in particular three in particular:Halo effect, through social desirability, and finally the guinea pig effect.

Concretely, in a Serious Games, the evaluation will no longer be based on a general impression linked, for example, to the person's physical appearance, but on the candidate's results in a virtual scenario, which de facto eliminates the Halo effect.

For social desirability, candidates naturally take time to reflect to adjust their answers to questions, when it comes to multiple choice questions. It is obvious that the choices will be oriented in such a way as to appeal to recruiters. The immersion that digital technology can offer tends to significantly reduce this bias, where, caught in the mechanics of a game, talents will respond more instinctively.

Finally, the guinea pig effect is a great classic of face-to-face assessment. The evaluated candidate behaves differently when he knows he is being observed. The absence of physically present evaluators reduces this effect. Once again, it is immersion, which will allow the candidate to let go and behave naturally.

Discover the Yuzu model

After several years of R&D with researchers in Psychology and Neuroscience, we imagined Yuzu : one New Generation Assessment Center, specialized in the assessment of soft skills (the famous soft skills).

With Yuzu, talents are immersed in scenarios developed with the latest technologies of the Video game.

The evaluations, on the other hand, are accessible to all profiles thanks to simplified orders and cloud technologies (all you need is a computer and an internet connection to be evaluated).

Discover the Yuzu Assessment solution

The advantages of our solution:

• One candidate experience exceptional for boosting your employer brand;
• A solution accessible to all to ensure equal opportunities;
• A decision support tool to detect and promote interpersonal skills.

Whether it's for your recruitment process Or of internal mobility, we are transforming the assessment of Soft Skills In a moment Loud and playful.

What to remember: digitalization and immersion

While the Assessment Center is a practice that has largely proven its worth over the past fifty years, its digital adaptation has only just begun.

Indeed, online questionnaire submissions have been legion since the beginning of the 2000s, but the real revolution, to exploit the full potential of digital technology seems to come from immersion.

This is actually the element that comes up the most in this article. While the needs of businesses are constantly changing, the same is true for candidates.

In this sense, the new generations are making entertainment a point of honor, more equality, more transparency, more agility.

To enter the new era of recruitment, companies will have to make the choice of immersion.