Christof Obermann

Assessment centers (AC) are a common method for personnel selection and development with a focus on management positions, using a coordinated combination of different individual assessment procedures (psychometrics, interview, simulations). Due to the Corona pandemic, traditional face-to-face delivery could essentially no longer continue and the alternative was to conduct assessment centers remotely. However, this created several questions. The first sub-study examined whether the results in face-to-face or remote were comparable in terms of difficulty. For this purpose, two parallelized data sets (N=168 participants each) from comparable AC procedures on hiring or promotion decisions were contrasted, differing only with respect to their mode of implementation (remote vs. face-to-face). It was found that the difficulty (overall result across all exercises/competencies, percentage passed) of the remote AC was comparable to AC in face-to-face form. The second sub-study examined how participants experience the remote AC and how much they accept this format. It was found that subjective participant acceptance of remote AC varied considerably between individual participants. Significant correlations exist with AC outcome (OAR), age, prior experience with AC, job level, and the expression of the Big Five personality trait "openness to new experiences." Not relevant, however, are previous experience with videoconferencing tools or the cognitive abilities of the participants.