While most businesses still rely on CVs and interviews to select new employees, some companies have adopted a new method. They are known as Assessment Centres, and as you might expect they are used to assess candidates for a job.

What happens at an Assessment Centre ? Ordinarily, applicants will be asked to take part in a series of exercises and activities that have been specifically designed to give employers a better idea of how well candidates will fit in and perform in their organisation.

These activities are completed under the observation of industry professionals whose job it is to assess each applicant’s specific strengths and weakness and then to decide whether or not the person is qualified for the position.

Assessment centre activities often last for a day or two, and may leave job-seekers feeling a lot like lab rats. They will also come away feeling totally drained. But in a difficult economy most people simply don’t have a choice, and many companies have expressed complete faith in this new method.

What are employers/assessors looking for? More than anything else the method is designed to demonstrate an individual’s attitude, intellectual ability and social skills.

The Assessment Centre concentrates most on these areas because it can be difficult or even impossible to learn much about them from a CV or a simple interview. After all, a person can put on a good face and appear to have a positive attitude or even be quite social during a ten-minute interview. But it is much harder to keep up the act for a day or two of challenging group and individual activities. And having been through such a day - trust me they are VERY challenging and only the very best jobs are worth going through this for.