The myth of assessment centres

The assessment centre is considered a complex but efficient procedure in the field of personnel selection and development. Accordingly the requirements for this procedure are high. On the one hand it should meet standards of quality and objectivity and on the other hand it should achieve optimal results tailored to the area of application. These results and expectations are based on the ideas of the users. Accordingly in practice the assessment centre is influenced by various interest groups and thus becomes a tool of personnel and micro politics. This development creates a discrepancy between the claims and reality of this personnel development tool. This raises the question of whether the current application of the assessment centre is not already an Assessment Centre 2.0 which has distanced itself from its original concept and thus undergone a further development from a tool for aptitude diagnostics to a tool for corporate micropolitics.