About the AC/DC

If someone in Europe or America is talking about the most effective way of selecting a leader, then we can almost be sure that the so-called "AC” (Assessment Centre) will come up as the best solution. What is this "panacea" actually?

Back in the twenties, forming groups from people with leadership potential and giving them tasks similar to their later assignments for the sake of observing how they would behave, seeing if they would be able to solve problems successfully was already fashionable in Western Europe. They attempted to compile tests that combine the advantage of the standardization aspect of psychological tests with the benefit of greater generalization due to the similarity to real life scenarios.

Before and after the Second World War, they applied simulation exercises to British, American and German army officers, recognizing that life-like situations may reveal features that would remain hidden through the "more sterile" psychological methods. Assessment Centres originally from Europe but it was in America where they have become really fashionable in the 1970s and have conquered Europe back in the past 40 years afterwards.

In Hungary, only about 20 years ago, the human resource specialists have been really interested in AC/DCs. SHL is not only one of the world's largest test distributing and test manufacturing company, it is also a pioneer in developing Assessment and Development Centres. The Assessment and Development Centres can have many purposes and areas of application, from which the most important is selection and development. Accordingly, they are often referred to as "Assessment and Development Centres" (often as "AC/DC"). At one end of the spectrum, for example, is the one-day Assessment Centre, which results in a large corporation deciding who to hire and who to reject from the newly graduated students (without any need for development). And on the other end, there’s the Development Centre, which sole purpose is to explore the participants' development needs, without any effort being made to compare the participants to each other. In most cases, however, the assessment and development goals are mixed.

The Development Centre seeks to integrate a variety of methods. In addition to traditional psychological tests, questionnaires and interviews, on of the speciality of Development Centres are the simulation exercises.

In recent years, we have helped several large companies to develop their Assessment and Development Centre (AC/DC) system which they can manage by themselves afterwards. From now on, you also can learn from our consultants how to integrate Assessment and Development Centres into your selection and career planning system and apply it on a stand-alone, long-term basis.

By completing our 2-day practical training (September 12-13), you will be able to incorporate the Assessment-Development Centre into your company's selection and career planning system, including:

Designing Competency Models

• Learning group, in-tray, analysing-presenting, fact-finding, role-playing exercises
• Training internal assessors, developing competency matrices and schedules
• Incorporating personal experiences

SHL Hungary uniquely provides a textbook related to the subject of the training, so it does not have to be purchased separately. The hundreds of pages of serious and internationally recognized auxiliary material will always be at your disposal after our professional training.