Courses for Core Skills

Assessing GSR Candidates

Overview

Please find our suite of GSR Assessment courses below. We run these courses in-house, please do get in touch if you would like more information.

Assessing GSR Candidates – 2 day GSR assessor training course

This two day training course is designed for individuals with no experience in competency based assessment who want to ensure they have the necessary training to be able to sit on GSR selection (recruitment or promotion) panels. As well as providing a detailed overview of the GSR assessment process and the key evaluation criteria, the course will also cover the core skills needed to assess. This course is very practical and provides delegates with the opportunity to practice assessing using a competency based interview, an oral briefing and a presentation exercise in order to assess GSR professional expertise. It will also include an understanding (what and how) of how to assess the key competencies from the Civil Service Competency Framework and how assessment centre decisions are made (the ‘wash-up’).

Those who attend the course will have access to our new GSR oral briefing exercise which has been specially commissioned by us and can be used for recruitment and promotion. In order to provide individual feedback, the course will only be run with up to six delegates per tutor.

Assessing GSR candidates – 1 day course

This 1 day training course provides GSR assessor training for individuals who are experienced competency based interviewers but have never assessed on a GSR assessment centre (or any assessment centre); or have sat on some assessment centres but have never utilised an oral briefing exercise. As well as providing an overview of the assessment processes within GSR, the main focus will be to familiarise delegates with assessment centre methodology and principles, and importantly, to allow the practice of key tools; in particular, an oral briefing and presentation exercise. The oral briefing exercise will be a new one and has been especially commissioned and designed to be used to select GSR candidates. Those attending the course will be licenced to use this oral briefing exercise. In order to provide individual feedback, the course will be run with up to six delegates per tutor.

A to Z of GSR assessment centre design – 0.5 day course

This 0.5 day course is designed for those tasked with putting together an assessment centre or recruitment campaign to select (recruit or promote) GSR candidates for SRO and PRO positions. It will cover the principles of assessment centre design and the range of tools that can be used as well as expose to the range of associated scoring material) and the wash-up procedure. The course is practical and at the end of the day candidates will have designed their own assessment centre to meet their particular needs, including selection of appropriate general competencies from the Civil Service Competency Framework as well as Professional Expertise. Please note that this is not an assessor training course (please see above for other courses designed to equip delegates with assessing skills).

Those who attend this course will have access to our new oral briefing exercise. We will aim to bring out a new oral briefing once each year and for a small fee we will grant former delegates the licence for access to them. 

DIY GSR Oral Briefing exercise - (1 day plus a 0.5 day follow-up one month later)

This very practical 1 day plus 0.5 day course is designed to help those responsible for recruiting social researchers to develop their own oral briefing exercise. Oral briefings are a necessary part of the assessment of Senior Research Officers. Attending this course allows departments to develop their own ‘bespoke’ exercise to assess the Government Social Research Professional Expertise competency as well as some other key competencies from the General Civil Service Framework. This is an innovative course and will be facilitated by a team who have been developing oral briefing exercises for various parts of government since 2005. Given the interactive nature of this course, the number of delegates will be kept small – around 4 to 6.

This is an interactive course in which delegates will work with each other, and the facilitators will guide you through the process from brainstorming of potential scenarios to completion of the exercise ready for trialling. On day one, delegates will initially develop ideas according to proven exercise development processes and criteria. They will then ‘populate’ their ideas from a rough exercise scenario into a GSR compliant exercise assessment ‘shell’, to be completed before day two, approximately one month later. On day two, delegates will be able to verify and road test their exercise with volunteer candidates, as well as obtaining expert feedback from the facilitators experienced in exercise design. Between day one and day two each delegate will have access to one hour of telephone / email advice from one of our facilitators to on their draft exercise. Delegates will also have to option to purchase additional support from our organisational psychologists, if required.

For more information, to book or to register your interest in future course dates

Contact Us