We covered in previous articles some different topics of people potential evaluation (Article 1, Article 2 and Article 3).

What we are going to deep dive now is the king of all tools: the assessment.

First of all let’s define what this kind of meeting is and which are the main points:

• Is a methodology consisting of a meeting to assess people through practical tests focused on interaction
• Is a methodology that cannot be improvised: so take your time to plan and test the whole package before going live
• The meeting involves up to 15 people and will focus on “behavioral” interactions. This doesn’t mean it will be only a group discussion, but can include individual interviews

As I said before, the assessment day is not something you can take out of your hat in 10 minutes: it needs practice and experience to be managed in an effective way.

The key points to conduct a good assessment are:

• Tell the truth: do not mask the assessment as something different. Be honest and open for day objectives
• Let people be comfortable: take in mind that in any case this day will cause to people some stress that will be at different level of degree from person to person. So don’t start to early in the morning, plan to have some breaks at the end of each activity, make no more than 9 hours including lunch and breaks

What to measure.

Of course meeting people for the sole pleasure of watching is not the aim of this kind of event, so we need to understand what should be assessed.

Unfortunately there’s no general rule to determine what to focus more on, since potential evaluation should be crafted for each situation, but as a general rule of thumb you should consider covering at least this areas:

• Relational area: Everything that relates to building and stabilizing relationships.
• Leadership
• Negotiation
• Social skills
• Team work
• Intellectual area: everything that is related to finding solutions to problem not deriving from operational and decisions. Includes
• Analytic
• Synthesis
• Mind flexibility
• Managerial area: It refers to being capable of being effective in reaching results. It includes:
• Problem solving/Decision making
• Pro-activity
• Planning
• Team management

Some tips to conduct the assessment:

• Be sure to take note of participants positions in terms of seating
• Give them badges with numbers not names
• use abbreviations for repetitive behaviors (e.g. “*” for someone stopping some other)
• Trace anything you feel relevant and then rework on it after closing the event
• Rework on results until you feel confident