Assessment Center

Created in the early 40s to recruit and train US secret agents, the AC was later successfully employed by companies as a personnel evaluating technique.

Many of the most important US companies, like GE, AT&T, IBM, GM, started using the AC as a selecting method.

In the 70s the AC became a popular technique in Italy, too. To date it's considered an useful "laboratory setting" for personnel selection.

While this method is mainly employed when recruiting new personnel, it can also be used to evaluate employees within a company, in order to analyze their potential and possible future internal career developments.

It can be defined as an evaluation tool at a wider level, useful to reduce errors within the evaluation process, through the efforts of one or more observers.

The AC is different from other evaluation procedures because it encompasses various kinds of methods; among them, situational tests and an analytical method based on the juxtaposition of observations.