The Assessment Interview

Times change and techniques change, but the essence of managing people, products, money and markets, and of the decisions which relate to them, remains the same. In May 1963, volume one issue one of the Journal of Scientific Business (which became Management Decision in 1967) was published. Its coverage dealt with many perennial issues of management: “A new look at the role of the specialist”, “The role of the universities in management education”, “The use and abuse of test market research”. In the first of a series of management classics, we are pleased to reprint a short article in which Elizabeth Sidney, then Director of Studies of the Institute of Directors' Communication Training Programme, looks at the assessment interview and makes points which remain fresh and challenging for managers 23 years on.