These aren't abstract questions. They’re the questions organisations and participants are asking us today. They reflect the wider shifts we’re all seeing: technological evolution, AI, a more prudent hiring context, and uncertainty about the skills that will matter most in the future.
That’s why we developed these field notes, bringing together different points of view based on what we see every day in the field, as well as the testimonials and experiences we share with clients and participants in assessment and development centres.
And while much around assessment and development centres is changing, one thing isn’t: the reasons organisations use these services remain remarkably stable. They still want to identify the best candidate for a role, get advice on promotions, discover the next generation of leaders, and/or support the integration of leadership teams after acquisition. Even in times of talent shortages and hiring freezes, the need for focused external advice remains strong.
What is changing, however, is how assessment and development centres are delivered, what they should really assess, and the kind of experience they need to create.
These field notes are based on the experiences of Cedric Van Garsse, Isabelle Stas, and Lukas Siebert, experienced PwC executive coaches and assessors, and enriched with views, trends, and specific requirements from the companies we work with.
Today's assessment and development centres
1. AI is unlocking new horizons in assessment and development centres
AI is already everywhere in assessment and development centres. It’s in the backbone of the process: in testing, questionnaires, reporting, and increasingly in the wider infrastructure around talent decisions. It’s also in the hands of candidates, who use it to prepare for interviews, rehearse business cases, sharpen written responses, and structure their thinking.
This is why one question comes up again and again: can I use AI to crack my business case or prepare my role play with the assessor coach?
It’s a good question because some assessment and development centres still rely heavily on business cases, role plays, intelligence tests, or reasoning exercises, especially for leadership, management, and executive roles. But the real issue today isn't simply whether those methods remain useful. It’s whether organisations should allow candidates to use AI for these tasks when those same candidates may already use AI in their daily work—whether to digest large amounts of data, structure a business problem, or prepare for tough conversations with direct reports.
The answer, in our view, depends on what the organisation is truly trying to assess.
If the aim is to understand whether a candidate can independently process data and translate it into strategic scenarios, then a controlled environment where AI isn't allowed still makes sense. But if the aim is to assess critical thinking, interpersonal skills, negotiation, impact, cultural connection, and self-management, then allowing AI may be entirely appropriate, provided the process is designed accordingly.
This is the more important shift. As AI becomes better at helping people digest and analyse data, the analytical component of many assessments becomes less decisive on its own. The weight increasingly shifts toward the capabilities that remain more distinctly human:
Interpersonal skills
Critical thinking
Self-management
Adaptability and self-reinvention
Impact and negotiation
Cultural connection and judgment
So, the question isn't whether AI is present. It’s what the organisation wants to assess and which competencies are crucial in the role. If analytics, data processing, and strategic thinking are core to success, then AI use may need to be restricted. If the aim is to raise the bar on strategic judgment and human capability, then the use of AI may be less of a threat and more of a context condition.
The AI question also won’t stop at candidate preparation. Today, recruiters already use agents and avatars to interview, screen, and call candidates. Candidates are already using tools for CV writing, job applications, and even live support during interviews. The next step is easy to imagine: not only candidates using AI, but candidates being represented by increasingly sophisticated agents and avatars.
This is where governance becomes more important.
The European AI Act matters for assessment and development centres as AI systems used in employment and access to work are generally treated as high-risk. For organisations, that means more than simply checking whether a tool is efficient. It means ensuring transparency, appropriate oversight, documented controls, fairness, explainability, and meaningful human involvement in talent decisions. In practical terms, this means there needs to be a human in the loop for both assessment and development centres.
That doesn't make AI less relevant. It makes the role of the assessor-coach more important. Training and certification initiatives will need to evolve even more so assessors can deal with this new reality and continue to play their role as an independent, objective, data-driven assessor and coach.
2. Organisations look for leaders to transform the business and demonstrate collective leadership
One of the clearest shifts in assessment and development centres today isn't just methodological. It’s about the type of leadership organisations are looking for.
Due to the megatrends we’re seeing—including climate change, demographic evolutions, technology acceleration, and geopolitical instability—leaders need to reinvent their businesses, connect it to a broader ecosystem, and find new opportunities in other sectors. This requires courage, open-mindedness, boldness, creativity, and the ability to spot opportunities and trends. At the same time, leaders need to guide teams through uncertainty and demotivation while creating purpose and a sense of direction in the world around them.
That’s why many organisations are looking for transformative leaders to shape the organisation of today and tomorrow. At PwC, we build our assessment and development centres services around transformative leadership, and increasingly look for leaders who can make sense of the world as a basis for reimagining how the organisation can create value in a complex system
Set radical ambitions by committing to address a significant problem and compelling the organisation to undergo fundamental transformation to achieve it
Achieve the promised outcomes by getting personally involved in reconfiguring the system, empowering the organisation to go beyond what it already knows how to do
Act as a catalyst by attracting and bringing together the very different capabilities and talent needed to solve the problem they set out to address
Power the engines so they and their teams remain energised, grow, and develop throughout the transformation
But there’s another important question emerging from the field.
Given the increasing pressure on leaders today—from a performance, technological, and human perspective—are organisations spending too much time looking for the “superman” or “superwoman” leader?
Increasingly, organisations are turning to alternative collective leadership models, where leadership responsibilities are shared across a group or team, empowering individuals with the most relevant expertise to take the lead on specific challenges while maintaining shared accountability for success.
For assessment and development centres, that has practical consequences. It means we aren't only looking for leaders who can transform the business and reinvent the workforce. We’re also looking for leaders who can distribute leadership, work across boundaries, and create outcomes through others. In other words, leadership isn't only about individual force of personality. Increasingly, it’s about how someone enables capability across the system.
3. The ROI of assessment centres
Assessment and development centres are sometimes seen as time consuming, expensive, and difficult to justify—especially in a recruitment, promotion, or succession context where speed matters.
But this view misses the bigger picture.
Think again: you spend four months recruiting your new Director. Six months in, it isn't working. The team is losing trust, projects are stalling, and you’re back to square one. Sound familiar?
Research consistently shows that a failed senior hire costs between 2.5x and 4x annual compensation, once you factor in severance, re-recruitment, lost productivity, team disengagement, damage to client relationships, and reputational risk.
This is why the ROI conversation needs to be reframed. An assessment centre adds a layer of predictive validity that interviews alone cannot match. It isn't simply another step in the process. It’s a structured, evidence-based intervention that can reduce risk and improve decision quality. It’s better understood as insurance against one of the most expensive mistakes in talent management.
At the same time, assessment and development centres providers also need to reinvent themselves. The solutions offered need to be relevant, focused on what’s necessary, user-friendly, fast, and supported by technology. The old image of locking candidates in a black-box room for endless tests and role plays belongs to the past. The more effective centres today are inspiring, enriching, and co-creative leadership sessions—two-way or three-way interactions supported by modern technology and focused on the leadership capabilities that really move the needle.
So, it can be tempting to skip the assessment and development centres in a fast-moving process. But if an organisation is serious about top talent—the kind of people who can really make a difference—then focused external advice remains one of the most practical ways to manage risk and prevent future mis-hires.
4. Getting ready for your ACDC? Prepare everything... and nothing!
One of the most common questions organisations and candidates ask is how to prepare for an assessment or development centre.
That question has become more complicated. Today there are readily available tests online, sample business cases, preparation websites, and AI agents to coach candidates. Overpreparing is easier than ever, especially when motivation is high and the stakes for the role feel significant.
But here’s the paradox: the more an assessment or development centre is well designed, the less it can be “won” by performance tricks alone.
Assessment and development centres can contain a wide range of elements—phone screenings, interviews, testing, questionnaires, leadership scans, business case presentations, people management role plays, negotiations, business games, group assignments, even hackathons. But behind all these formats, what the assessor-coach is trying to discover is fundamentally simple: who you are, how you act, how you interact with people, and how you tackle a problem, a project, or a mission. In that sense, an assessment and development centre is as much about discovering yourself as it’s about being evaluated.
That’s why authenticity matters so much. If someone spends the day trying to play a role or imitate a leadership stereotype, they may get through the assessment, but they may also end up in a role that’s a poor fit. And that serves no one, not the organisation, not the participant, and not the assessor.
The more an assessment centre is well designed, the less it can be ‘won’ by performance tricks.
Of course, some preparation still helps. Familiarity with test formats and process expectations can create a small advantage. But the strongest preparation isn't about becoming someone else. It’s about creating the conditions for your best self to show up:
- Protect your energy and focus
Prioritise deep rest and calm by sleeping well the night before, removing unnecessary travel stress, and using breaks to reset rather than overthinking the last exercise. - Lead with genuine authenticity
Don't try to act like a stereotypical loud executive if that isn't who you are. Trust your instincts, your experience, and your values when making rapid decisions. - Maintain high curiosity and openness
Listen to understand. Treat role-play partners and assessors as people with context you need to uncover. If challenged, show you can adapt rather than defend. - Channel positive, collaborative energy
Bring visible energy for the task and the people in the room. Treat the experience as developmental, regardless of the final hiring outcome. - Cultivate mindful adaptability
Let go of mistakes quickly. Wipe the slate clean between exercises. Stay fully present in the current moment rather than trying to predict how you’re being scored.
This is why preparation is, in a way, both everything and nothing. It matters, but not in the way many candidates think.
5. The Assessor is the coach that tells you the inconvenient truth
If one aspect of assessment and development centres has changed profoundly, it’s the role of the assessor-coach.
Historically, assessors often operated as silent auditors: observing from the side, scoring against rubrics, and issuing a delayed report used mainly for one-time hiring decisions. The model was transactional and often one-directional.
Today, that model is giving way to something more interactive and more valuable. Modern assessor-coaches create the psychological safety required for authentic behaviour to emerge. They don't simply observe. They challenge, probe, and provide feedback during the process. They assess not only technical capability, but also emotional intelligence, values, learning agility, and the candidate’s broader fit with the organisation.
Looking ahead, this role is likely to become even more strategic. As AI takes over more of the heavy lifting in data capture, transcription, and initial competency mapping, human assessors can focus more fully on the nuanced layers of human interaction, the things that still matter most and are hardest to fake: judgment, chemistry, recovery after challenge, and the deeper patterns behind behaviour.
At the end, the assessor coach is there to help the organisation forward and to give genuine advice, even if in the short term it isn't what the company wants to hear. Sometimes that’s the inconvenient truth, especially when everyone in the organisation is already aligned around a candidate. But that truth is often where the value lies.
The same is true for the candidate. The best assessor-coaches don't simply pass judgment. They help people understand themselves and take away insights that matter beyond the immediate role. In that sense, the assessment or development centre becomes more than an event. It’s the start of a longer development conversation.
The assessor coach is there to help the organisation forward and to give genuine advice, even if in the short term it isn’t what the company wants to hear.
What really matters now is making the right and better decisions
Some things haven't changed.
Organisations still need help making better talent decisions. They still need to identify the right leaders, evaluate promotions, discover future leadership, and reduce the cost of getting key appointments wrong. Candidates still want clarity, insight, and a fair chance to show who they are. And assessors still need to observe rigorously and advise honestly.
But other things are changing quickly.
AI is reshaping what can be measured, what can be outsourced, and what should matter more. Leadership itself is shifting toward transformation, but also towards more distributed and collective leadership models. The strongest assessment and development centres are becoming lighter, more focused, more interactive, and more human, even as they’re supported more by technology.
That creates real opportunities for both organisations and candidates: organisations can make better and more future-focused talent decisions while candidates get more meaningful and developmental insight. Together, this helps to meet business needs, empower individual potential, and unlock long-term growth.
Assessment and development centres remain relevant not because nothing has changed, but because they can evolve with what leadership and organisations need now and tomorrow.
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