Assessment Centre exercise design for PizzaExpress plc

PizzaExpress wished to update their assessment centre process for Assistant Managers and asked Informed Assessment to develop a suite of tailor-made exercises.

Informed Assessment spent time with the HR department, specifying the exercises to be developed and paying particular attention to the logistics associated with the administration and scoring of these. A comprehensive range of fact-finding sessions were undertaken with post holders in order to build up a bank of realistic and relevant scenarios and situations which could be used in the exercises.

A group exercise, role play exercise, team-based exercise and a planning exercise were drafted. All were subject to a stringent validation programme consisting of two sets of post holders sitting the exercises, noting their comments and observations, and making appropriate amendments and adjustments.

The result is an integrated suite of exercises, all based around the same fictitious restaurant chain, so that candidates really can get to know the context through the assessment day. Additional scenarios have been generated for the group exercise so that these can be rotated, and the shelf-life of the product considerably extended. The scoring guidelines were made as user-friendly to assessors as possible, by providing tangible examples of how candidates’ performances in particular competencies could be measured.

The exercises have now been used on over 20 occasions and the scoring guidelines are being further fine-tuned as part of the complementary review and ‘bedding in’ process.

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Fran Horne, Recruitment Manager for PizzaExpress, said:

‘The exercises have been well received and have given us a fresher, more realistic way to assess our candidates.’