The 41st International Congress on Assessment Centre Methods and Developing Leadership Talent which took place in Windsor (UK) gave us an opportunity to talk to talent management professionals from all around the world. We would like to present a few of them. We will start our tour of the world by showing you assessment practices in South Africa.

When virtual reality and artificial intelligence come together

The experts, David BISCHOF and Pieter BRONKHORST told us about the history of assessment in South Africa, sometimes called the “rainbow nation”, in reference to the diversity of this nation. Under the influence of American pioneers, assessment centre methods spread in large companies in the 1970s and 1980s. This approach, recognised as an effective way of measuring leadership and managerial skills, soon attracted managers and senior executives.

The real benefit of assessment centre stems from its ability to meet two objectives:  assessment and development. Combined with psychometric and personality tests, the assessment session provides a substantiated understanding of the behaviours and motors of the person being assessed. These two talent management professionals showed us their latest solutions for virtual, tailor-made, assessment solutions, developed in house, and available online. Based on global research that demonstrates that professional simulations have a predictive validity rate that is higher than psychometric tools, the company designed a product that combines (virtual) simulations and  psychometric tests: “Evalex Business Simulations”.

This complete method relies on 6 professional role playing games used to make assessments for recruitment and to plan the follow-up and training of an employee. This approach assesses 6 key leadership skills. Of course, the scenarios are adapted to the management level of the candidate or employee.

This digitalised solution, completed remotely by the person being assessed, can also rely on artificial intelligence: and can produce strong predictive analyses. This product can improve the candidate’s experience, operational efficiency and the accuracy of the results. The process uses the fundamental principles of assessment centre through the use of exercises such as “post sorting “or “in basket” as well as virtual scenarios using interaction with two avatars.

Participants are also invited to answer a questionnaire on their personality, management style, values and aspirations. This very thorough psychometric test also looks into other criteria such as emotional management, cognitive abilities, etc. As soon as those being assessed have completed all the stages, they can access all the results via a digital portal. The feedback is also given remotely.

Who is Pieter BRONKHORST?

Industrial and Organisational Psychology graduate, Pieter BRONKHORST obtained a doctorate from the University of Cape Town before founding EvaleX in 1980, OMT (Organisation Management Technologies) in 1992 and Odyssey Talent Assessments in 2015. Pieter developed 8 psychological tests and an on-line assessment platform. He publishes his research in the journal, SIOPSA (the Society for Industrial & Organisational Psychology South Africa). Member of the The Assessment Centre Study Group of South Africa, Pieter BRONKHORST recently presented his studies on artificial intelligence.