Talent Q now belongs to Korn Ferry, and Elements and Aspects are two different tests

Talent Q Elements and Aspects ability tests ask numerical questions on tables, verbal questions on passages and, in Elements, shape-pattern logic, with a clock on every question. Our reasoning test drills tables and passages under time, and our abstract reasoning test covers shape patterns.

Elements is adaptive, so difficulty rises or falls with your answers, and we cannot reproduce that. Aspects Checking, an error-spotting task, has no match in our tests. The Styles and situational parts are questionnaires with no right answers, so there is nothing to drill there.

An invitation usually names the suite, and the difference changes how you prepare. Elements is the heavier set, used for managerial, professional and graduate roles, with verbal, numerical and logical reasoning tests. Aspects is shorter and is often used to screen large numbers of applicants for frontline and operational jobs, with an ability part and a styles questionnaire.

If the invitation does not say, ask the recruiter. A search summary puts Aspects at around 8 minutes in total for the ability screen, and Elements at 15 to 16 minutes per reasoning test, so the two take very different commitments.

Prep sources agree that Elements adapts: question difficulty changes with your answer to the previous one. They disagree about Aspects. One says Aspects tests are adaptive, another says Aspects is a fixed-form test used for high-volume roles and that Elements is the adaptive one.

The safe plan is to assume the question after a correct answer is harder, and not to read difficulty as a sign of how you are doing. A hard item can mean you are doing well.

Talent Q shows a timer for each question, so you cannot bank spare time from an easy item. Reports put about 12 questions in an Elements test and one source gives 75 seconds a question for Elements Logical, which we could not verify.

Build a rule for the timer: look at the question, decide whether you can see a route within the first quarter of the time, and if not, make your best estimate and move on. Our numerical and verbal reasoning test is useful for building that habit on tables and passages.

Aspects includes a Checking subtest in place of a logical matrices test. It is an error-checking task, where you compare two sets of information and mark the ones that do not match. Speed and care both count.

A good practice habit is to compare in chunks rather than character by character, and to scan the whole line before you decide. For shape patterns in Elements Logical, use our abstract reasoning test, and for passages and tables, our verbal reasoning questions.

Aspects Styles is a competency-based questionnaire, and Talent Q also has a situational judgement suite. Neither has right answers you can rehearse as sums. They compare your pattern of answers with a profile for the role.

The one rule that helps is consistency. Answer as you actually behave at work, because the questionnaires repeat the same idea in different words and a pattern that contradicts itself reads badly.

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

• Prep sites report that Elements tests are adaptive with a time limit on each question and about 12 questions per test.
• One prep source says Elements Logical gives 75 seconds a question, which we could not confirm.
• Guides say Talent Q has no simple pass mark and that employers set their own cut-offs, often against a graduate norm group.