HSBC's online assessment reads like a day at work. Get ready for the tables and the emails

HSBC says its assessments use audio or visual content, including graphs and data tables, and can include mock emails and written articles. Reading data and reading text under time pressure is what our reasoning test trains, with business tables first and passages second.

HSBC describes a work-simulation style: you may be reading emails and articles as well as tables, and your invitation may add situational questions and a video interview. Our test is a plain two-part reasoning test on a single 45-minute clock, so the format will feel different.

Most reasoning tests give you a table and a question. HSBC's guide says its questions can use audio or visual content, and it lists mock emails, data tables and graphs, and written articles. That is a mixed bag, and it suggests tasks closer to a working day: read the email, check the figures, answer the question that follows.

The practical consequence is that your reading speed matters as much as your arithmetic. A table-only warm-up trains half of it. The second half of the practice test above gives you passages to read against the clock, which is the other half. You will not see an HSBC email in it, but you will practise pulling the one relevant sentence from a block of text without being thrown by the rest.

HSBC's application guide says each assessment takes around 40 minutes. Its three-step overview lists 90 minutes for the online assessment stage. Prep sites give about an hour in one guide and about 50 minutes in an older one. A Hong Kong candidate report says roughly 40 minutes.

These are not as inconsistent as they look. HSBC says there are one or two stages depending on market and programme, so a 40-minute assessment could be the whole thing for one programme and half of it for another. Do not guess. The invitation tells you which stage you are in and how many assessments you have to complete.

What you can do is get comfortable concentrating for 40 minutes without a break. The practice test above runs 45 minutes. If you can sit it in one go and finish strongly, you have the stamina HSBC's shortest version asks for.

HSBC points candidates to a Practice Zone. It shows you the interface, the layout of a question with audio or visual content and how the timer sits on the screen. Use it for those things. Use our test for repetition against a clock, because repetition is where speed comes from.

The order that works for most people: one full timed test here to find your weaker half, two or three short sessions on that half, then the Practice Zone the evening before.

HSBC says its charts are clearly labelled and that you do not need to distinguish between colours. If you are colour blind, that matters, and it is the kind of detail an employer includes when it has thought about the format. If you need adjustments beyond that, such as extra time or a different format, HSBC's guide covers how to ask. Do it before you begin, not midway through.

Prep guides suggest reviewing basic arithmetic, ratios, percentages and currency conversion for HSBC's numerical questions, which is sensible for a bank. Three habits cover most of it.

• Read the title and the units first. A table of thousands of pounds and a table of percentages need different answers.
• Write down what you are looking for before you look: "difference between Q3 and Q4 for the largest region."
• Do currency conversions as a single multiplication and label the result, so you do not mix pounds and dollars.

Prep sites report a recorded interview after the assessments, with a few questions, short preparation time and about three minutes per answer, built around made-up work scenarios from your business area. HSBC's own guide mentions video or written responses for some programmes.

The best preparation is to rehearse one answer out loud with a stopwatch. Three minutes is longer than most people think.

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

• A 2025 prep guide describes the first stage as a situational judgement test, numerical reasoning and verbal reasoning lasting about an hour; a 2023 version says about 50 minutes; a Hong Kong candidate says roughly 40 minutes.
• Prep guides describe the logical test as SHL's non-verbal inductive test, where you find the pattern and choose the next shape. HSBC does not name SHL on the pages we read.
• Prep guides describe the later video stage as a one-way interview with 4 to 6 questions, about 30 seconds to prepare and about 3 minutes per answer.
• One prep guide claims a typical passing percentile of 60 to 70 with no source. HSBC does not publish pass marks.