Admin tests score your typing on error-adjusted speed and test Excel inside a simulated window

Office employers who add a reasoning screen often use a basic skills test, and Criteria recommends its 40-question, 20-minute Basic Skills Test for administrative assistants. Our Wonderlic-style test trains the quick vocabulary, arithmetic and instruction-following those screens use, and our WorkKeys-style Workplace Documents test trains reading memos and policies.

The core of most admin screens is a typing test, a data entry test and Word or Excel tasks in a simulated window. We offer none of those, so build them with real software and a typing trainer, and use our tests only for the reasoning part.

Prep sites describe the Kenexa Prove It typing test as a short passage to retype, usually 3 to 5 minutes, scored as both average words per minute and adjusted words per minute. The adjusted figure takes errors into account, so careless speed costs you.

If you type 60 words a minute with several mistakes, your adjusted score can fall below a careful typist at 50. Train for accuracy first: type practice passages at a pace where you make almost no errors, then raise the speed slowly. Use passages with names, numbers and punctuation, because office text is full of them.

Prep sites describe the Kenexa Word test as interactive, designed to mimic how Word is used on the job, and Excel and Word tests often come as a bundle. Rather than asking which menu holds a command, the test asks you to apply a style, insert a table or sort a range, and checks what you did.

Mettl's administrative assistant test lists Excel functions, view options, data inputs, hyperlinks, advanced filters, pivots, sort and filter, and formulas. Prep sites describe a Normal User Excel level of 30 tasks and a Power User level of 25. Ask which level the job uses, then practise those exact actions in the real program until they are automatic.

A simulated program may not look like the version on your own computer. eSkill offers its Office tests for all years and versions, so the layout you see depends on what the employer picked, and a menu may not be where you expect it.

Learn both the ribbon path and the keyboard shortcut for the common actions: bold, styles, find and replace, freeze panes, sort, filter, SUM, AVERAGE and VLOOKUP or XLOOKUP. If the menu you expect is missing, the shortcut still gets you there, and the reverse.

eSkill lists data entry tests for legal, medical, government and business text, contact and form entry, and 10-key. One basic clerical battery covers alphanumeric entry, 10-key entry, typing, proofreading and reading comprehension along with Word, Excel and PowerPoint, in 29 questions.

For 10-key, practise on the number pad without looking down. For proofreading, read for one kind of error at a time: first spelling and names, then numbers and dates, then punctuation. Our WorkKeys Workplace Documents practice helps with the reading side.

Criteria recommends its Basic Skills Test for administrative assistants: 40 questions in 20 minutes covering grammar, spelling, math and language, with questions getting harder as the test goes on. Some employers add it to the skills tests to check reading and arithmetic.

This is the part our practice tests cover. Our Wonderlic practice test mixes vocabulary, quick math and following instructions under a clock, and the Wonderlic Basic Skills Test page explains a similar entry-level format.

These come from anonymous reviews, university careers pages and prep guides. They often disagree, and Administrative assistant has not confirmed them. Read them as leads, not rules.

• Prep sites report that the Kenexa Prove It typing test runs for 3 to 5 minutes.
• Prep sites describe Word and Excel tests offered at three difficulty levels.
• An eSkill article says applicants who perform poorly on a general typing test are probably not suited to clerical work.