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I recall being told that the best way to assess a newbie was to see how quickly they asked about marshalling at the F1 Grand Prix. PPE tends to give a better indication that badge colour in my opinion, as it reflects attitude.
As somebody who gets a lot of first timers for company, I find that chatting one on one even before we start gives a quick gut feel. Watching their reaction to near misses can be very revealing - the "wow he nearly had a biggie" said excitedly suggests they might be there for the buzz of crashes. Those who ask "what would we have done if that had turned into ......" are big winners in my book.
As the first hour or so passes, I'll pay particular attention to how they react to the traffic - if they always remember to keep looking the right way and can also recognise the leaders / back markers, then my level of trust will rise.
Importantly, if they seem particularly strong or weak, I'll make sure I'm feeding back examples to the PC / IO - I've the luxury of small numbers compared to their larger team to watch over.
Regarding upward feedback - I like the theory, but agree that the last thing needed would be to turn a day on the bank into another day at work! I have fed my thoughts back to various CM or similar bods at times, but do so with some trepidation as knocking their best mate will be ignored and praising them will add no value? If anybody on my post (regardless of grade) is really impressive with a rookie, I'll make sure that I feed that back - in the hope that the best mentors get recognised regardless of grade. I am saddened when I come across black X grades who don't write comments even when asked, or need to have current grading scheme / upgrade process explained to them.
I do like to discuss actions on adjacent posts with trainees - done carefully to avoid it seeming to be a "slagging off" of the others. Learning from other people's mistakes doesn't hurt as much as from your own! A recent example that my IO used was to ask a trainee watching a live snatch several questions as it progressed - by the end, he could see exactly why 2 orange bods walking alongside the JCB with race traffic whizzing towards them might have hurt .... much more likely to stick in the memory than lots of theoretical stuff.
Hopefully, those PCs who use the PRC to get a quick first impression are the best at making sure a good entry gets made at the end of the day to help the next one?
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