When one method is enough
A conversation grounded in the manager’s observations may be enough for feedback on a single work situation. For a promotion, identify two or three critical tasks in the new role and use different sources when they answer different questions. An interview can clarify past experience, while a work sample shows how people handle the same task under the same conditions.
| Method | When to use it | Strengths | Limitations | Time and cost |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Structured interview | Hiring or promotion where experience in specific situations matters. | Consistent questions and rating criteria make answers easier to compare. | Answers depend on what people recall and how they explain it. A task can provide additional evidence of the skill. | Design questions and scoring criteria, train interviewers, and allow time for each interview. |
| Work sample or simulation | You need to see how someone handles a critical task. | Shows the approach and the result under conditions similar to the job. | Covers a sample of the work. Familiarity with a tool or industry may influence performance. | Design and pilot the task. Complex simulations take more resources to run than short written exercises. |
| Knowledge or ability test | You need to check knowledge or a skill required from the start. | A common format and scoring rules help when assessing many people. | Check that the test measures something relevant to the role and that candidates can take it under comparable conditions. | An off-the-shelf test is usually faster to launch. Budget for licensing, adaptation, or administration as applicable. |
| Personality questionnaire | You want to discuss working style, motivation, or possible responses under pressure. | Suggests hypotheses and questions to explore against examples. | Responses indicate tendencies. Assess job skills separately. | Often easier to administer at scale than interviews. Allow for instrument selection and interpretation. |
| 360° feedback | Someone is already in the role and needs feedback for development. | Shows how peers, managers, and direct reports experience the person’s behaviour. | Ratings depend on what people have observed. Anonymity can be harder to protect in small groups. | Allow time to collect responses from several groups, process the results, and hold a feedback meeting. |
| Performance review | You have observations and results from a comparable period in the employee’s current role. | Uses evidence from real assignments to agree on what to develop next. | Workload, resources, and colleagues can affect results. Success in the current job alone does not establish readiness for a different role. | If goals and evidence already exist, allow time for reviewing them and meeting. Otherwise, agree on criteria and collect examples first. |
| Structured reference check | You need to verify evidence about a finalist’s previous work. | Former managers or colleagues can corroborate specific examples. | Candidates often select their references. The answers depend on what those people observed. | Prepare consistent job-related questions, confirm contacts, and allow time for calls and comparing responses. |
| Assessment center | A complex role calls for evidence across several competencies and situations. | Combines exercises and observations from multiple assessors. | Quality depends on how closely the exercises match the role and how consistently assessors score them. | Typically the most resource-intensive option here. Requires exercise design, assessor training, and scheduling. |
How to compare costs before you start
Add up the time and cost of preparing materials, assessing each participant, and reviewing the results. Per-person time matters in a high-volume selection process. For a single promotion, exercise design and assessor training may account for more of the cost. Compare options using your expected participant count and the evidence you already have.
Example. Choosing a customer support manager
The role requires prioritising requests and delegating. Ask each candidate to describe an overloaded queue and what they personally decided. Then give everyone the same anonymised queue and ask what they would handle first and what they would delegate. Agree in advance on what a strong response includes: customer impact, workload, and when to escalate. If the person already holds the role and the goal is development, use examples from recent shifts and feedback from the team.