Not all in-tray
or in-basket exercises have an opportunity for you to justify
why you selected the answer you did. For the majority of
participants the in-tray exercise will consist of time to read the
overview and in-tray items and then a further allocation of time
to answer multiple choice questions.
It is unlikely that a discussion aspect to the in-tray exercise
will be sprung on you on the day In most cases you will be told in
your invitation to the
Assessment Centre that your in-tray exercise includes a
section to discuss or justify your answers. The use of the
justification, or discussion, tends to be used for the more senior
level positions where the Assessors are required to thoroughly
assess your decision making abilities. They will be assessing how
well you can explain your actions and decisions, as well as
testing your resolve to stick with your original decision.
The justification may take the form of a very structured walk
through of each question in turn with minimal feedback or response
from the Assessors. If your prospective role requires you to have
considerable analytical and evaluator skills you may find that the
justification is targeted at those most important issued raised in
the in-tray documentation. If this is the style of justification
you know you will experience then it is essential that you grasp
the key organisational and project issues so that your reasoning
is based on a sound foundation of the situation presented in the
exercise. Many questions will ask you to ‘choose the option
closest to what you would do.’ This is especially important for
you to highlight as part of your justification, because although
you chose a certain approach if you faced the situation in real
life you would act slightly differently giving your reasons why.
This enables you to bring in your own skills and expertise as part
of your justification.
Some
Assessment Centre Assessors prefer to have a discussion after
the in-tray exercise. This may be with the candidate and a small
panel of assessors; or it can be with all, or a small group, of
the other candidates and an assessor. Usually the Assessor will
ask how many selected Option A, for example, as their answer and
ask them to justify why they chose that instead of Option E. The
behaviours you would be expected to exhibit are similar to that
for the justification above in terms of how you arrived at your
decision, but you will also need to take into account the dynamics
of working within a group. The most important thing for you to do
is to ensure that you view is heard by the group and the Assessor
and you are able to clearly justify that decision.
Where you are applying for these senior roles you should prepare
for this aspect of the in-tray exercise as you would for any
interview. For example, if you work through a test
in-tray
exercise when you read through the reasoning for the answer
you can prepare your own queries you would ask if you were the
assessor. Design your queries to test the reasoning behind the
selected option and see how easily a candidate could be persuaded
to change their answer. You can also compare how your current
organisation would respond to your chosen answer. In this way you
will be testing the strength and vigour of your own decisions.
You could also get a colleague or mentor to work through the test
in-tray exercise and then before you look at the answers compare
your chosen options. Where you have agreement see if you both have
evaluated the information provided and assigned the same priority
to the issue. This will enable you to see another perspective to
the same problem and give you some insight as to what the Assessor
will be looking for. Where your answers are different you can see
how well you justify your own answer and if you can see any flaws
in your analysis of the situation. This will give you a real
feeling of how easily you can justify your own answers, or whether
you are too easily persuaded to change.
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