Barclays or other big 4 psychometric test?

[M511]

Has anyone here successfully passed the SHL test for Barclays/other bank/consultancy? I believe Barclays use the SHL type test, if you had passed could you please share which resource you used for practice?

I passed one of these tests 8 years ago but I was still fresh out of education and as I'm a bit older I am bound to need hours of revision!

From my research there seem to be the following players;
practiceaptitudetests
graduatesfirst
graduatemonkey
and SHL themselves but they don't provide solutions.... any help will be welcome!

[haventahybrid]

I did one 4 weeks ago.... I however got stitched up the recruiter believed it was only a standard personality fact finding exercise... It was in fact the the numerical exam, verbal reasoning and personality. All timed with no preparation. The look I gave my wife once I had logged in to begin on what was supposed to be a nice relaxing Sunday morning. Seriously though, I would not worry to much. I know not what my scores were but I do know I was offered the job. In hindsight too much practice would probably have impeded me, it was quite refreshing just being hit with it.

Good luck!

[Jerry Can]

according to HR at my place of work who use these tests, they are looking that you score between 50 and 100%.

It will be the personality test ( if you have one - personality that is) that we carry more weight, plus your presentation, interview, appearance and general attitude

[CaptainSlow]

I did the numeracy and non-verbal reasoning tests for my current role about a year ago.

I scored full marks on the numeracy putting me in the top percentile.

I did similar tests a few years ago for a different employer and still hold the record on the numeracy test. To get top marks you need to get all the answers correct quickly.

[haventahybrid]

CaptainSlow said:

I did the numeracy and non-verbal reasoning tests for my current role about a year ago.

I scored full marks on the numeracy putting me in the top percentile.

I did similar tests a few years ago for a different employer and still hold the record on the numeracy test. To get top marks you need to get all the answers correct quickly.

Are you sure? I thought to get top marks you should answer all of the answers incorrect slowly!

[CaptainSlow]

I'm not 100% sure, but my method works for me. Point being you need to be quick with the answers.

[haventahybrid]

CaptainSlow said:

I'm not 100% sure, but my method works for me. Point being you need to be quick with the answers.

I'm only playing. You are right, you have to be quick but when I did it there was an electronic timer on a count down so it was quite clear how quick you had to be.

[Du1point8]

Yup I have done them for one of the big for, I did them 17 years ago and was top 1% for everything but english as I suck at it.

They took me on as the maths/reasoning/etc were all very high.

[M511]

Thanks guys, I've been practicing most evenings and I can see a gradual improvement but some days I feel like I'm regressing! Did you all have to revise a lot before the actual test?

[craigjm]

M511 said:

Thanks guys, I've been practicing most evenings and I can see a gradual improvement but some days I feel like I'm regressing! Did you all have to revise a lot before the actual test?

There is no point in practicing just the test papers because success is not based purely on getting all the questions correct.

The first measure is obviously % correct but then it gets complicated and this is what you can’t practice for -

Your mark is then converted into a “rate of correct answers” using a complicated formula which really suggests you should guess any answers you have no clue on because you get credit for being almost right.

That mark is then compared against a “norm group” which is an average mark for people taking the test in the nearest example to your profession “junior managers” for instance and you get a quartile rating from that.

Having done all of that each recruitment process puts more or less emphasis on each area of the tests. You can therefore progress through to the next round having failed numeracy in one organisation or not progress having aced verbal reasoning in another.

What often scuppers people is the personality profiling. There is no point trying to guess what they are looking for because the questions are compiled in such a way that if you try and game it to get a specific outcome you will be caught out. Again you don’t know what any particilar organisation is looking for.

My advice to you would be -

Keep your maths ability fresh by regularly doing any kind of maths puzzle and things as simple as adding up your shopping as you put it in your basket in your head and see how close you are when it goes through the till.

Read articles from the likes of the economist or Harvard business review and try and bullet point the top 3 things it is saying are true and three things you cannot use the article as evidence for based on what’s written.

Don’t ever try and game a personality test. Fill it in honestly and get the outcome you really represent. Any unusual output shows you are potentially dishonest and would lead to you being relegated from the process. Worse than that though, you could end up in an organisation where you are a square peg in a round hole because you games it.

Lastly, remember these tests are an element of the recruitment process not the whole process and each organisation puts different levels of emphasis on their outputs. So you can be amazing at these things but still not yet the job or you can fail miserably and still get the job because the other elements are higher weighted.

[Du1point8]

M511 said:

Thanks guys, I've been practicing most evenings and I can see a gradual improvement but some days I feel like I'm regressing! Did you all have to revise a lot before the actual test?

I didnt even know I was supposed to take a test.

was 21 and told to turn up to a room in Uni and told to sit down and take a test.

My brain just works that way and I see patterns in number and logic, hence Im good at that and crap at english.

[haventahybrid]

As i said before I'm not sure how much revision would have helped. The verbal reasoning is really just reading through a set of statements which make up an often dreamt up scenario. You then answer questions based on that. You must just answer true, false or cannot say based on the statements you have read. The numeracy exam, I was instructed to have a calculator with me so mental arithmetic revision wouldn't have helped much. I believe it's more down to the way your brains hard wired and whether you can work out the correct things to actually calculate. Again this was based on statements, graphs and diagrams. Do agree with the poster above re personality exam. You just have to try and be honest and most importantly consistent with your answers.

[djc206]

I had to do a load of psychometric tests for my job and then at a later stage a computer based test that also involved multiple choice questions with another task thrown in to make it nigh on impossible. I wouldn’t try to practice I don’t think it’s really something you can learn to do as far as I could tell. As for the personality tests I think we sat 3 or 4 in total each slightly different but obviously looking at consistency so again no way to play the system there. Good luck!

[Shaoxter]

CaptainSlow said:

I did the numeracy and non-verbal reasoning tests for my current role about a year ago.

I scored full marks on the numeracy putting me in the top percentile.

I did similar tests a few years ago for a different employer and still hold the record on the numeracy test. To get top marks you need to get all the answers correct quickly.

I did so many of those tests when applying for graduate roles that I could just wizz through them as they were all the same format and you had to look for the same kind of things, even if the numbers weren't the same. I kept trying to break my record, think my quickest time was something like 11 mins for a 30 mins test