The use of questionnaires in coaching applications is well established and highly valued to understand the client more holistically. However many of these tools have been based on specific theories, often with a very practical application in mind, rather than direct reference to an established and robust personality framework. As such, the psychometric properties of typical coaching tools can fall well short of that expected of trait questionnaires, raising issues of sufficient breadth and depth of assessment when working with sophisticated clients in modern business and life. This session will outline the use of a number of trait tools in coaching assessment. Given that personality is made up of individual traits, coaching clients should be able to be profiled accurately from trait personality data alone, without having to use specific type or role tools. Specific case studies are drawn from international occupational databases with groups in excess of 20,000 participants. It will be shown that there are different approaches taken when using trait profiles in effective coaching interventions. Illustrations will cover data reshaping, concept modelling, and factor integration. As this data holds high psychometric properties, it gives scientific-practitioner credibility to the assessment for subsequent development initiatives within a coaching context.

The Assessment Center for prospective career officers (ACABO) has been in use as a selection tool in the Swiss Armed Forces since 1996. Students who want to become career officers must pass the ACABO before they start the Bachelor Study Course at the Military Academy in Zurich. The ACABO is a classical three-day assessment center and conforms to current quality standards (International Task Force on Assessment Center Guidelines, 2000; Swiss Assessment, 2010). Ongoing evaluation of an assessment center is crucial. While it is certainly important to evaluate construct validity as well as the criterion-related validity, care should also be taken to ensure the social validity. For instance, even successful candidates may view an organization as less attractive if they perceive this organization’s assessment center negatively (e.g., Gilliland, 1993). In the current paper, we present different study findings which illustrate the procedure of an evaluation process within an operational assessment center and the impact of this scientific examination on the further development of the respective selection instrument. Specifically, we present results regarding the validity of the ACABO (N > 300) and discuss our findings from a practical perspective.

The idea of having national standards began with a benchmark, which was carried out among the biggest companies of Turkey, to understand the assessment center usage and the competency assessment tools. After realizing the organizational differences between assessment center operations within the context of benchmark studies (e.g. assessor trainings, assessor evaluation methods, data integration sessions, job analysis methodologies, using technological/online tools, exercise designs, competency numbers per exercise, and total competency numbers per assessment center), some of the experts representing a wide range of talents and interests from universities, business organizations, consultants, and the psychology profession came together to establish the National Assessment Center Guideline. The draft version of the National Assessment Center Guideline and the topics (e.g., vocational qualifications & certification, the preparation of the AC candidates, and the rights of the parties, etc.), which were discussed by the study group members.

Assessment Centres can come in all shapes and sizes, however the one thing that should be consistent is the quality of their implementation. There is increasing witness of a large degree of difference in quality of provision, yet this has been largely anecdotal in content and collection.The purpose of the paper is aimed at giving a practical ‘in the field’ spotlight on what is actually happening in Assessment Centres on a more systematic case basis. Observations of Assessment Centre implementation by the author have been collated within 10 medium to large sized consulting companies, delivering in 5 different countries. Fundamentally the findings show that there is a large bandwidth of practice – ranging from what could be classified as ‘Best’ to ‘Questionable’. Clear links are made to British Assessment Centre standards, European Test User Qualifications, and ISO 10667. Fortunately illustrations of best practice do show what is possible to achieve within an organisational context. The suggestion is made that raising the awareness of issues within Assessment Centre Implementation by practical example will raise standards in the longer term, with test and assessment professionals taking the lead.