Your name is Ann Smith, and you have been appointed as the new General Manager at ABC Foods...
An in-basket exercise comes the closest to the type of work that managers face on a day-to day basis.
It is one of the exercises that form part of what is known as ''Assessment Centre'' methodology. Other tools in this category are often a leaderless group discussion, an analysis exercise, a fact-finding exercise, role play or presentation.
In our business, we prefer to use an in-basket exercise when assessing managerial candidates for a number of reasons: