 In the previous topic, we have talked about informal and formal selection systems. In this topic, we are going to talk about one prominent selection system, formal selection system, which are the assessment centers. So where formal selection is actually employed, assessment centers are something that are usually established in order to assess a person over various different skills and abilities for a particular international assignment. So assessment centers and interviews are recommended as best practice in the literature. Literature suggests that if you want to select a person for international assignments, what you should do is that you should assess that person's ability in an assessment center and also followed by interviews. What happens in assessment centers is that assessment centers are structured facilities which are established by organizations in which people are assessed on various different activities and they are assessed on various different skills and abilities in an extended period of time. It is not something which is a 15 minutes interview. Usually in assessment centers people are invited and they usually spend an entire day sometimes two or three days in which they interact, in which they talk to people with the organization, they do different activities, they participate in workshops, they participate in role plays, they participate in discussions, they are supposed to talk about issues, they are supposed to engage, they are given challenging situations and they are interviewed by the management and human resource personnel of the people. So there is a selection board, not just one person who assesses the ability of these people. Skills which are evaluated in assessment centers, one is the prior international experience and what the person has gained from that international experience, it's not just that okay, this person has got three years of international experience, what is the outcome of that international experience is that person really somebody who can culturally manage things well, who can connect with other people from different cultures. So what has that person gained from the prior international experience? Then ability, what is assessed in these assessment centers is the ability to adjust to foreign environment. This is something which is foremost, which is very important to assess. A person's soft skills, they are assessed, then a person's intercultural sensitivity, how sensitive that person is towards different cultures and then various different traits of his personality, for example, extraversion, for example, how that person responds to risk and risk taking and various different dimensions of the personality as well. So these are the various different skills which are evaluated in assessment centers. So in this chart, you can see that these are the tasks and exercises that are used in an assessment center. So in the column you can see that the type of exercises which are used in assessment center are, for example, presentation, role play, the person may need to fill a questionnaire of something which is being assessed, then group discussion and case study may also be given to the person to analyze a particular case so that their ability to evaluate situations, different situations can be assessed. So presentation, role play, questionnaire, group discussion, case study, but this is not an exhaustive list. There may be other elements of the exercises which could be done in an assessment center. Now you can see that on the horizontal row, there are different exercises, the aspects which are assessed on these particular exercises, they are written down in the horizontal row. And you can see that what is being assessed is tolerance for ambiguity. Then goal orientation, a person is oriented towards achieving goals or not. Then interpersonal skills, then empathy, a person is able to empathize with other people or not. Then non-judgmentalism, that is very much important. The person cannot be judgmental when you are trying to be inter-culturally, cooperative and flexible. Then a person's flexibility, overall flexibility to adjust to different situations. And then meta communication, communication of not just verbal communication but the overall communication of a person. So that is something, this chart gives you a kind of orientation on how skills are assessed, what type of skills are assessed in an assessment center and how these skills are assessed in an assessment center. The next chart gives you a complete list of the way an evaluation is done for a role play in inter-cultural assessment center. So if you are assessing someone's inter-cultural ability and you are trying to do an assessment with a role play, then what dimensions of inter-cultural assessment will you assess? You can see it in the column, tolerance for ambiguity, interpersonal skill, empathy, non-judgmentalism, flexibility and learning orientation. These are the six skills that you will evaluate for a person's inter-cultural adjustment and ability to adjust to a different culture. So in the horizontal row, you can see that there are examples for a high inter-cultural competence and examples of a low inter-cultural competence. So what will you see in this person's role play, which you will come to know that he rates high or low on a particular dimension. So for example, we will discuss one or two. For example, for tolerance for ambiguity, that is, the ability to tolerate uncertain situations in someone, what you will see in that person is patient and if not, that person is impatient. Then if the person is high in tolerance for ambiguity, what you will see is that the person shows a sense of humor. He is light-minded. He is not too tight-lipped. He is somebody who is cheerful and therefore uses different type of humor while interacting with other people. And if the person is low in tolerance for ambiguity, then you will see that he is very serious. He will not talk to anyone, he will not interact with anyone easily, he will not joke with anyone. So from this, you will know that that person has got low tolerance for ambiguity. Another example, let's take the example of, for example, empathy. So if you want to see that someone can empathize, can understand the problem of others, can understand that he can step into the shoes of another person. So for that, if that thing is present, what you will see is that the person puts oneself in the place of the business partner, for example. And then the second thing what you may see is that avoid offending behavior. He does not offend people. He interacts with people in a compassionate way and does not use an offending language. And on the other hand, if that person is low on empathy, then you may see that he is only aware of his own situation. He only knows about his own, he only knows about his skills, he only knows about what he likes to eat and what he wears. That does not mean that what other people do. And usually these types of people often offend others because they are so self-centered that they use language and they use such kind of expression which is offending to other people. So if you want to see that if a person has got empathy, then it is something that you can see from these particular behaviors. So I have discussed two examples, the rest of them they are quite clear and you can very easily read it from the slide that what type of behaviors may be seen to assess different dimensions. And this is something that is assessed while you are evaluating a person when they are doing a role play. So this topic was basically discussing the role of assessment centers and how assessment centers they evaluate the skills and abilities of a person for international assignments.