Tired of running another stale Assessment Centre? Consider using an Escape Room instead.
Compare what typically makes up the group exercise aspects of assessment centres in today’s hiring scene: discussion, strategy on how to overcome an issue, reaching consensus through communication and comparison of opinions, and then a brief presentation. Day after day, time after time. The same subdued routine that only brings out the same subdued responses from a group that puts on a practiced but unenthusiastic display.
If you swap your traditional hiring format for a non-traditional game format, you can see how using an Escape Room can demonstrate the same skills in a fresh setting: authentic displays of communication and teamwork, leadership and decision-making, lateral thinking, problem solving and above all, adapting to new situations in a timely manner. You want “innovative talent”? This is how you will find it.
Recruitment Refreshed
You could be trying to avoid the more typical group task where applicants queue up just to say their twenty second piece in a group discussion, or the same stale roleplay, a new situation might be just what is needed to find something new in your would-be employees.
A formal Assessment Centre setting does facilitate a professional approach from applicants, but will it necessarily bring out the ‘authentic’ side? Will it allow them to get swept away in the experience that you can see the ‘real’ person? We can avoid rehearsed and rehashed monologues by putting applicants in unfamiliar surroundings to prompt urgency and true reactions.
Typical Assessment Centres will all include similar group activities no matter which boardroom, hotel or conference centre they are held in. Want your candidates to really think on their feet? Put them in a situation where you can see a better indicator of their true behaviour, rather than evaluating them based on the settled repetition of standard process.
Great Group Activity
A variety of differing problem types (e.g. mathematical vs logic, spatial coordination vs pattern analysis) can show you where an individual is skilled already, determined to treat it as a learning situation, blindly stubborn in the face of their own shortcomings, or acknowledges their limitation and enlists the help of others.
Adapting under pressure to a new situation where collaboration is vital will show the capacity for a candidate to advance the team over themselves. Swap this out for their inspiring [yet vapid] speech that nobly summarises the hypothetical responses of the group in your old task.
With studies showing that upwards of 40% of new hires failing within their first 18 months, the sanitised display at your usual Assessment Centre is quite likely to be a misleading one. Let’s give critical thinking a real test instead.
When your group of applicants find themselves needing to cooperate against the clock, there won’t be anywhere someone can “hide” by volunteering to take notes.
Escaping Exhausted Elements
Let’s have a brief look at some of the attributes that an Escape Room can reveal better than an Assessment Centre:
- critical thinking at speed – how do they perform when it isn’t a matter of remembering buzzwords?
- disposition to try new approaches and test hypotheses – how creative are they?
- analysing situational requirements – how well can they assess structural mechanics of a task and adapt?
- organisational abilities – what do they do with the resources discovered?
- teamwork under pressure – can they be patient and cooperative with a big ticking clock?
- measuring composure – do they become flustered or remain calm?
- reaction to own limitations – do they acknowledge when/if they need help?
- response to perceived skill gaps in teammates – do they give help to others? (and how is this received?)
- identification of leadership qualities – who brings out the best in others towards a common goal?
- identification of teamwork qualities – who fits in to the unit?
- reflection: what kind of questions do they ask based on issues encountered in the room as well as from their own performance?
Authentic Applicant Analysis
At the heart of all of this, you as the assessor will be able to conduct your evaluations (and the candidates will still be able to evaluate each other on the day’s performance) based on a more authentic display through the raw performance in front of you, ready to pick the best staff for your organisation.
Your next step is to talk to the Escape Room owners to see what other aspects of your criteria they can assess on. Teamwork, leadership, time-management and adaptive thinking are just the start.
