Using assessment centres to develop student competence: Nine steps to success and better partnerships

ABSTRACT Developing student competence relevant to real-world practice has been a persistent challenge in tertiary education. Organisational psychologists use assessment centres in industry to measure job-relevant competencies of employees or job-candidates to facilitate accurate recruitment or development decisions. Despite its potential as an innovative approach to developing student employability, this methodology remains novel in higher education. To stimulate wider usage and consideration, the steps and success criteria associated with a long-standing developmental assessment centre programme for postgraduate organisational psychology students are explained and demonstrated. The programme’s benefits have extended beyond delivering a quality assessment solution to providing a contemporary strategy to strengthen industry partnerships, thus ensuring sustainability and circumventing common criticisms of assessment centres being resource intensive. Although contextualised in the setting presented, this case highlights the assessment centre approach and practice implications for academics, particularly given that partnerships, and student competency and employability are important responsibilities for all university departments.