The importance of a great assessor experience

Assessors are a critical element in the success of any recruitment campaign, not only do they help to discover top-quality talent, but they also affect a candidate's perception of your business. Therefore, it is imperative for you to ensure that your assessors are kept happy and that they have a full understanding of their role throughout the candidate assessment period. This process can also be defined as “assessor experience.”  

In this blog we dive into the key components of assessor experience, sharing insight into how your organisation could improve its own assessor experience for your next recruitment campaign.  

Why are assessors so important?

As previously mentioned, assessors are a critical component to the success of any recruitment campaign. In most cases, they will be your primary source of information when it comes to candidate performance throughout your assessment or assessment centres. In addition to this supporting guidance, assessors are also key decision makers regarding which candidates progress to the next stage of your recruitment process.  

Subsequently, training your assessors to review and evaluate candidate performance effectively should be of high priority throughout your recruitment campaign.  

Helping your assessors review consistently

There are many factors to consider when preparing your assessors to review candidates. Our experts have highlighted some of the key elements to consider when establishing a consistent assessment system.

• Provide clear instructions on what their role is and what you expect from them throughout the process
• Create clear and detailed guidance on how to identify high performance within the candidate cohort
• Ensure that assessors understand your desired outcomes from the assessment or assessment centre
• Create and operate example workshops on how assessors should be correctly scoring and recording comments for candidates
• Outline what dialogue assessors can have with candidates; this could include creating a script that they are able to refer to

Introducing this guidance will help to create a consistent procedure for candidate evaluation, increasing your likelihood of identifying top-quality talent.

Training your assessors

Alongside the development of a candidate evaluation system, you must also introduce regular training for your team of assessors. This training should be fully comprehensive and include guidance on how to fluently use your assessment platform. It’s also useful for your assessors to familiarise themselves with the candidate portal, so that they can troubleshoot issues during assessment centres.

Second to providing training on your software, you should also consider any hardware that your assessors may use. PCs, laptops and tablets are just some of the important pieces of equipment that assessors are likely to be using on a regular basis. Providing guidance on minimum system requirements for hardware and software, such as operating systems and browsers, will avoid holdups or delays to the assessment process. Consider organising virtual workshops, webinars and providing online guides.

Promote clear and open communication

Much like candidates, assessors need clear and regular communication. As a rule of thumb, you should always supply an open channel of communication for assessors to use throughout the assessment period. This channel should be direct, easy to use and be directed to a main point of contact within your business.

Another form of communication to consider is how assessors talk to each other. Implementing a system that allows assessors to liaise with each other can help with ‘spur of the moment’ troubleshooting, as well as improving morale. WhatsApp groups and other team chat platforms offer a great solution for this.  

We hope that this blog has provided you with some insight into why assessor experience is so important to the success of your recruitment campaign. If you’d like to learn more about how Tazio software can help you to deliver a better assessor experience in your next campaign, contact one of our expert team. 02922 331 888