Online Psychometric Tests

After submitting your CV, cover letter and personal details as part of an online application, you are then usually invited to sit a variety of online psychometric (or aptitude) tests. These include a logical reasoning test, a verbal reasoning test, a numerical test and a situational judgement test.

Psychometric tests are used by employers to objectively measure candidates cognitive abilities, attitudes, personality and knowledge. They are becoming increasingly popular in the recruitment process and are now prevalent in banking and finance job applications. These tests are believed to be a reliable method of assessing employability skills in a sense that they provide a source of meaningful and consistent insights over time, regardless the specificity of a discipline to which they are being applied.

Logical Reasoning Test

Questions in a logical reasoning test measure your ability to infer a set of rules from a flowchart or sequence of diagrams and then to apply those rules to a new situation. Looking at the example below, we can see that the black square is moving two spaces anti-clockwise on the outside of the polygon per image, as is the white triangle while the white circle is moving three spaces clockwise. The correct answer in this example is therefore A.

Verbal Reasoning Test

Verbal reasoning tests assess your understanding and comprehension skills. You will be presented with a short passage of text which you’ll be required to interpret before answering questions on. These are typically in the ‘True, False, Cannot Say’ multiple choice format, although there are a range of alternatives too. In the example below, we cannot say whether families with more than one child are common in China's rural areas. While the text suggests a one child policy is enforced in urban areas, it does not specifically address rural regions. We cannot make an inference based on information available such as "in provincial regions fines are imposed on families with more than one child".