Assessment centers: Reflections, developments, and empirical insights

Abstract

Assessment centers (ACs) are a popular evaluation approach often applied for the purposes of guiding employment selection and development decisions. AC participants are required to engage in a series of work simulation exercises (e.g., role plays, group discussions, and presentations), and their performance on those exercises is rated by trained assessors. It is these interactions between participants and work simulations that inspired early organizational interest in the AC approach in the late 1940s (Handyside & Duncan, 1954;Highhouse & Nolan, 2012) that has remained into the present.ACs continue to hold appeal in contemporary organizations, which is likely due, in part, to the their interpersonal nature (Kleinmann & Ingold, 2019) and the rich source of job-relevant information they provide, particularly on job candidates and for employee development (Lievens, 2009). In the same manner, ACs continue to motivate the interests of researchers, as evidenced by the volume of empirical articles on ACs published over the last 10 years (e.g.