"...Jimishbhai, kya kya activity hai...mereko toh bahut tension aa raha hai bhai...."

"...Jimishbhai, kya kya activity hai...mereko toh bahut tension aa raha hai bhai...."

...said Arifbhai, a day prior to his day at the Assessment Centre [AC]. ["Jimish bro, what all activities are planned...I am very tensed bro"]

At eClerx, we used to conduct ACs for all managerial promotions. Every nominee was assessed on a set of competencies by ways of different activities like role play, group discussions & other such tools. Each received an aggregate score based on how they did and then this score went in as an input for their promotion decision-making process. 

Arif was a nice admin guy. Good at his work. Good technical skills. But he struggled a bit with verbal English delivery. Unfortunately, in corporate set-ups in India, we use the English language for all written & verbal communication. While he was pretty decent at it, he lacked the confidence to speak freely in such group setups & forums. So when he was nominated, he was obviously stressed. 

I was managing the ACs, so my boss & I had tried to put him in a peer group with other similar guys who were technically good at their job but had similar communication challenges. So when he came to me wanting to know more about it, all I could tell him was that he should not worry & give it his best shot. 

The next day, he couldn't talk much in the group discussion. Though he did try to speak, he seemed to have been overwhelmed by the situation. Later in the day, it was time for his role play. We had given him a case of an upset internal customer and I was to play that role. I started off blasting him (as part of the act). He did well to tackle me but I noticed he was unable to put his thoughts into words, so I abruptly switched to Hindi & we continued with the rest of the role play in Hindi. Finally, it was time for his interview & the leader who interviewed him also used a mix of English & Hindi. At the end of the day, when the scores came out, Arif did well, but was in the lower half.

A week later, there was a long discussion about the ACs & the leadership agreed that something needed to change. The guys from MBA colleges and ones good at English speaking were doing better at the ACs and seemed to have an undue advantage at times. So it was decided to relook at the process and make it more fair. Eventually, a call was taken to stop using ACs for deciding promotions. Assessment Centre was rechristened as a Development Centre. The focus was to assess skills and competencies and use the outcome for the colleagues' development. It was delinked from promotions. 

Inspite of not ranking high in the AC, Arif was promoted. The decision was taken based on his performance and potential as assessed by the leaders, as they knew the AC scores weren't necessarily a true reflection of it due to the inherent flaws in the process.

Over the weekend, I got news that Arifbhai had passed. Passed on to a place too high for any of us to reach him. Promoted to an angel. R.I.P. Arifbhai, you will be missed.