Situational judgement tests: what employers say, and the one thing to prepare

The Civil Service describes its judgement test as short work scenarios in which you rate four possible actions. Deloitte describes realistic scenarios in which you rank actions by how likely you would be to take them. Lloyds describes a short work situation after which you say what you would be most likely to do. The format changes, but the principle does not: you read a situation and show how you would act.

Some employers dress it as strengths. Aviva calls its test a situational strengths test and EY describes situational strengths and business behaviours. The scenario is the same; the scoring looks at what you tend to prefer as well as what is sensible.

Several employers tie the test explicitly to their values. The Bank of England says its test shows how closely you align with its values. NatWest says its work scenarios show how closely your judgement matches its values. That is a hint about preparation: read the values page and look for behaviours, not slogans.

Then check that you can describe each value in terms of what a person does on a normal working day. If a value says collaboration, picture the actual moment when you stop to ask a colleague for input.

Teach First says it is not possible to prepare for its situational judgement test and tells candidates to answer honestly based on the information given. The Civil Service lists its judgement test separately from its verbal and numerical reasoning tests. When the employer itself says drills do not help, listen.

What you can do is understand the role. Read what the job involves, think about past situations where you had to decide between competing demands, and remember that scenario tests rarely have a trick. They usually reward a considered, honest, professional response over a clever one.

GCHQ says several of its role pages require a minimum pass mark on the situational judgement test, which asks you to rate the appropriateness of responses to short scenarios. The Bank of England says applicants who pass move to the video interview. Neither publishes the mark.

So a judgement test can be a gate too. The cost of treating it casually is the same as the cost of treating a reasoning test casually: you may never be read by a person.

Read each scenario twice. The first time, find who is affected and what is at risk. The second time, decide what you would do first, not what you would do eventually. Avoid options that avoid responsibility, such as waiting for someone else to act, unless the scenario shows you lack the authority.

Aim for a consistent pattern across questions. Employers often test the same value in several scenarios, and a mixture of contradictory answers looks worse than a steady, honest one. Take the test in a quiet moment, not between lectures.