The Thomas GIA is five short tasks, and the sources disagree on how long it takes

The GIA is a set of five short, timed tasks that measure reasoning, speed with shapes, speed with numbers, word meaning and spatial thinking. Our reasoning test drills the number and word parts under a clock, and our CCAT-style test adds mixed verbal, maths and spatial items against the same kind of time pressure.

We have no perceptual speed task, where you match or find patterns as fast as you can, and no spatial visualisation set built the way Thomas builds it. The GIA also changes its question count with your speed, which a fixed practice test cannot copy. Use our tests for pace and for reasoning habits, not as a forecast of a GIA percentile.

Thomas's example booklets name five tasks in order. Reasoning comes first, then Perceptual Speed, Number Speed and Accuracy, Word Meaning and Spatial Visualisation. A short search summary of the Thomas GIA page says it measures five key areas that affect workplace performance, and prep guides name the same five. One generic page describes only four areas (logical, numerical, verbal and spatial), which is the weaker source.

Each task is short and has its own instructions and clock. That matters for your plan, because the skill being tested changes every few minutes. You need a reset habit: read the instruction, try one item, then speed up. People who carry the pace of one task into the next tend to misread the first item of the new one.

Thomas's 2020 example booklet puts the entire assessment, instructions included, at about 30 to 45 minutes. One prep guide says about 40 minutes with sections of two to five minutes each. Another gives 12 to 16 minutes, and a search summary suggests that figure belongs to a practice product rather than to the Thomas assessment itself.

The only per-task figure we saw in Thomas material is about two minutes for Number Speed and Accuracy, taken from an older booklet. Treat every figure here as a range and read the instructions in your invitation, because those are the numbers that apply to you.

Guides quote between 130 and 160 questions. Another says the count depends on performance, so faster work means more questions reach you. We could not find a reliable per-task count, so we do not give one.

The practical point is that finishing early does not end the task. If the format keeps feeding items while time remains, a slow, careful style limits how many you can answer, and a wild guessing style can cost marks if wrong answers are penalised in a task. One source mentions negative marking in some topics, which we could not confirm. Check your instructions for how wrong answers are treated.

Thomas says the overall percentile estimates general intelligence and points to response to training, processing speed, concentration and fast-track potential. Percentiles compare you with a norm group, so a score at the 60th percentile means you did better than about 60 percent of that group, not that you got 60 percent right.

Employers choose the norm group and the cut. A role with a lot of training may weight the percentile heavily, while another may use it as one input beside an interview. Ask the recruiter how the result is used. They often answer.

Thomas publishes example booklets, and those are the best match for the format of the five tasks, so read one before anything else. For the reasoning and number parts, use timed practice with answers explained, and check where your time goes. See our numerical and verbal reasoning test for the arithmetic and word items, and our CCAT-style test for mixed items at a tight pace.

For perceptual speed, practise on anything that asks you to compare small details against a clock, such as proofreading a table of figures for a two-minute stretch. For spatial visualisation, use our spatial reasoning test for mental rotation.

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

• Prep guides describe the GIA as five tasks and quote 130 to 160 questions, a range that Thomas does not confirm in the example material we saw.
• One guide says the number of questions varies with performance, so faster work means more questions, which we could not verify.
• Candidates and prep sites give total times from 12 minutes to about 40, while Thomas's own 2020 booklet says about 30 to 45 minutes including instructions.