UK 
United States
In the past, we’ve used assessment centres to identify people for our talent management programmes. Are there any reliable alternatives that we can use to screen potential candidates?
We run hundreds of assessment centres every year and they remain one of the most popular approaches to measuring talent. They provide the most detailed information about how a person is likely to perform in future roles.
However, there are now a number of other tools available that you might want to consider. Some are more effective than others and range from questionnaires through to behavioural assessment and interviewing. Let’s run through the obvious options first:
· Work shadowing is a popular option, but can be expensive and the results really depend on the person’s diary on the day of the observation.
· Intelligence and personality tests can be somewhat limited if you want to create development programmes based on the results.
· 360s are another option, but these measure current performance rather than talent and potential.
I think the better solution for you could be situational judgement tests. These tests are an increasingly popular option for predicting job performance and measuring talent. Typically, a set of challenging scenarios will be presented and the candidate will be asked to select an option that best describes the action they would take. Situational judgement tests measure a candidate’s potential against desirable levels of leadership behaviour.
Situational judgement tests have a number of advantages that make this form of assessment very attractive to organisations:
· They allow screening of potential candidates and so reduce your number of false positives. These are the people who really underperform in assessment centres because the crit
