Have you got an interview coming up at which you will be required to take an aptitude test? Are you worried? Don’t be – I’ve actually designed them and can help you pass. Just read on.
Let’s look at why employers love an aptitude test so much. Have you ever considered what real purpose they serve and why they are so popular?
An aptitude test is a simplified model of the employer’s business. By asking you specially structured ‘theoretical’ questions, the interviewer can quickly and efficiently assess how you would respond in real life thus ensuring that only the candidate with a real aptitude is selected.
It also serves to:
- Quantify standard of literacy, numeracy and general intelligence
- Establish any gaps in knowledge or lack of ability leading either to candidate rejection or in-post training
- Determine trustworthiness, attitude problems, general employability
- Assess interaction potential with existing members of staff
Naturally you cannot know exactly what questions the aptitude test is going to consist of, however there are things you can do to improve your chances.
Literacy and numeracy
Now’s the time to brush up on all those spelling rules that you have glossed over in the past – the ‘i before e except after c’ rule, for example. Why not Google ‘common spelling mistakes’ for some suggestions?
Typical errors that annoy me are:
- Alot (they mean ‘a lot’)
- Definately (definitely)
- Wieght (weight)
- Publically (publicly)
- Recieve (receive)
- Referense (reference)
- Their, They’re, There (check usage)
There is no substitute for knuckling down and learning some spelling rules or getting your maths tables figured out (excuse the pun). If you’ve had lifelong issues with literacy and numeracy, get some free lessons or sit down and work your way through a whole load of self-tests. Either way, your lack of knowledge will hold you back – so don’t let it.
Ability
Multiple choice questions are the norm for this type of question since they control the candidates’ responses and allow for computerised scoring of the answers. As a result, there are many examples of these questionnaires on the internet for you to practise on.
Again, you either know your onions or you don’t. Read these questions thoroughly as, even though they rarely contain tricks, they can twist the point of view around. For example, for some given situation, they might not ask you what you need to do, they may ask what you shouldn’t have done.
Look at the question words carefully before answering.
If the question seems specific to the company (how could you know such a thing?) then either the company has come up with a dud question that no candidate can answer or the answer is in the question. Read the question again if you can’t do it.
Attitude and trustworthiness
These were my favourite. I loved them.
From an employer’s point of view, asking candidates questions like:
- “Are you honest?”
- “Do you approve of stealing?”
- “Would you skive off work?”
- “How do you feel about employees who lie on their time sheets?”
… are all wastes of breath. What answer would you give if asked these? Exactly.
An aptitude test, on the other hand, allows for a far better examination of an applicant’s ‘politics’.
For example, one of my favourite questions from our company’s aptitude test was:
One Christmas you are at your desk contemplating clocking out and going home when you notice a colleague openly putting rolls of Sellotape into his briefcase. He sees you watching him and unceremoniously declares, “I’ve got lots of presents to wrap.”
What would you do?
- Run into the boss’ office and say there’s a thief
- Threaten to tell the boss if your colleague doesn’t immediately return the rolls
- Pretend you saw nothing, shuffle some papers around and go home
- Call the Police as soon as your workmate has clocked out
- Wait until there’s a quiet moment and have a chat with the boss
- Snatch them out of his briefcase and defiantly put them back on the shelf
- Ask him to chuck you some rolls because you’ve a lot of presents to wrap, too
Think the answer’s obvious? Well, tell that to all the people who picked the wrong ones (and that was most of them). Being of a mischievous mentality and interested in psychology, I played a little game. Over the years, I introduced increasingly zany answers and the conclusion I came to was that no matter how daft, how ‘off the wall’ and downright silly my pre-written answers were, some fool would pick them.
For goodness sake, would anyone employ someone who openly admits they are going to steal given half a chance?!!!
The lesson for today is to read and re-read the question. Never, ever put down the answer you feel that the company would like you to choose, go for the one which the question indicates is right.
If the question says “2 is an odd number. Is 2 an even number or an odd number?” then the answer is ‘odd’ because that is what you’ve been told in the question. No-one cares whether it is odd or even, they only care that you read the question and can follow instructions.
Remember this when you do your next aptitude test.
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