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Practice the kind of situational judgement test (SJT) employers use: 20 original workplace scenarios on teamwork, communication, integrity, customer focus and decisions under pressure, getting harder as you go, against a 25-minute clock. For each one, pick the most effective of four responses. Try 10 sample questions with answers first, then see your score out of 20 the moment you finish the full test. Taking the test and seeing your score is free; a detailed report and certificate are optional.
Instant score out of 20
A practice test, not an IQ test. Every scenario on this page and in the timed test was written by IQ Metrics. Your result is a score out of 20, never an IQ, and there is no percentile, because a fair percentile needs a large group of earlier test takers to compare with. IQ Metrics is not affiliated with any employer or test publisher.
Ten situational judgement test examples, two from each area, easy first. Pick the response you think is most effective to see if you are right, what decides it, and why each other response is less effective. The clock starts on your first click: the full test gives you about 75 seconds a scenario, so aim to finish all ten in about 12 minutes. These ten are not in the timed test, so practicing them gives nothing away.
A project meeting has just ended. Several tasks were agreed, but nobody wrote down who will do what, and people are already leaving the room. What is the most effective response?
Most effective: B. Spoken agreements fade quickly and people remember them differently. A short written note of who does what by when takes two minutes and gives everyone the same record.
What decides it: Nobody wrote anything down, so without a written note the agreed tasks will be lost.
Why the others are less effective:
Your team compared two suppliers for a project and, after hearing your concerns, chose the one you argued against. Your manager now asks you to place the order. What is the most effective response?
Most effective: D. You had your say and the team decided. Good teamwork means carrying out a fair decision properly; if real problems appear later, you can raise them with evidence then.
What decides it: Your concerns were heard before the team decided.
Why the others are less effective:
A customer asks whether a spare part will fit an older model of their machine. You are not sure, and a colleague who would know is back in an hour. What is the most effective response?
Most effective: A. The right answer is an hour away. Promising a call back within the hour gives the customer a reliable answer quickly and keeps the follow-up with you, not with them.
What decides it: You do not know the answer, but someone who does will be back within the hour.
Why the others are less effective:
You are in the middle of an important video call with a client when the fire alarm goes off. You are fairly sure it is only a drill. What is the most effective response?
Most effective: C. An alarm means leave, every time. A client will understand a sudden 'the fire alarm is going, I have to go'; you can call back afterward.
What decides it: The fire alarm is sounding; whether it is a drill is not yours to decide.
Why the others are less effective:
A colleague goes to lunch and leaves their computer unlocked, with a customer's personal details on the screen. Visitors often walk through your office, and staff are asked to lock any unattended screen they see. What is the most effective response?
Most effective: B. Locking the screen takes a second and protects the customer's data completely. A friendly word afterward helps your colleague avoid the slip next time, without making it a disciplinary matter.
What decides it: A customer's personal details are on show where visitors walk past, and staff are asked to lock unattended screens.
Why the others are less effective:
A customer phones to cancel a subscription they bought ten days ago. Company policy gives a full refund within fourteen days. They have clearly made up their mind and say they do not want any offers. What is the most effective response?
Most effective: D. The customer is within the refund period, has decided, and has said no to offers. Doing what they ask quickly and confirming it in writing leaves a good last impression, which matters for reviews and for whether they ever come back.
What decides it: The policy allows a full refund, and the customer has made up their mind and refused offers.
Why the others are less effective:
Your manager has asked the team to phone them about anything urgent, because they rarely check email during site visits. Today they are on a site visit, and a key client has just said they will cancel their contract unless someone senior calls them back today. What is the most effective response?
Most effective: C. Your manager has told you how to reach them in an emergency, and this is one: the client wants a senior call today. A phone call gets the message through at once; you can follow up in writing afterward.
What decides it: Your manager asked for urgent news by phone, and they rarely see email on site visits.
Why the others are less effective:
In a meeting with senior leaders, your manager praises you for an analysis that your colleague Priya did most of. Priya is not in the meeting. What is the most effective response?
Most effective: A. The praise was given in front of senior leaders, and Priya cannot correct it herself. One short sentence in the meeting puts the credit where it belongs, without fuss, and shows that you can be trusted.
What decides it: The credit was given in front of senior leaders, and Priya is not there to speak for herself.
Why the others are less effective:
A former colleague asks you to be a reference for a new job. You worked closely with them on one project two years ago, but you know little about their work since then. What is the most effective response?
Most effective: D. You can speak truthfully about one project you saw closely. Saying so, and being clear about what you cannot judge, gives the employer an honest picture and still gives your former colleague real support.
What decides it: You have real first-hand knowledge, but only of one project two years ago.
Why the others are less effective:
You are on call when the company website goes down late at night. The on-call guide says to alert the senior engineer at once for any outage. You think you can fix it yourself in about ten minutes. What is the most effective response?
Most effective: A. The guide exists because outages can be worse than they look. Alerting the senior engineer takes a minute and does not stop you from working on the problem; if your fix works, they simply stand down.
What decides it: The on-call guide is clear: alert the senior engineer at once for any outage.
Why the others are less effective:
Your pace: The full test has 20 scenarios that get harder as you go, against a 25-minute clock.
Take the full 20-scenario test →A situational judgement test (SJT) describes realistic situations from work and asks which response would be most effective. It does not test knowledge or IQ: it tests how you weigh up people, priorities, rules and customers when there is no single obvious answer. [1]
Employers use SJTs because judgement matters in the job. A review of 102 studies covering 10,640 people found that situational judgement tests predict job performance, with a corrected validity of .34. [2] A later re-analysis suggests that estimates like this for hiring methods should be read about .10 to .20 lower, so treat any single test as one useful signal, not a verdict. [6] Most SJTs measure leadership and interpersonal skills. [4] You may also see it spelled situational judgment test, the usual US spelling; it is the same test.
This situational judgement practice test has 20 scenarios in 25 minutes, four in each of five areas, mixed together and ordered from easy to hard, the way timed employer SJTs are.
| Area | Typical situation | What good judgement looks like | Scenarios |
|---|---|---|---|
| Teamwork | A colleague asks you to take over their task | Help when you can deliver, and keep the plan’s owner informed | 4 |
| Communication | A deadline is suddenly at risk | Tell the person who owns it early, with options | 4 |
| Integrity | You are asked to sign a record that is not true | Refuse plainly, and help find a legitimate way | 4 |
| Customer focus | An upset customer has been passed around | Own the problem and follow it through | 4 |
| Decisions under pressure | Something breaks just before a deadline | Stop the harm first, then protect the deadline | 4 |
Every SJT shows a scenario and some responses, but employers ask you to deal with the responses in different ways. Read the instruction before the first scenario: it changes how you should answer.
Pick the single best of four or five responses. This is the format of this practice test, and the simplest to score: one point when you choose the most effective response.
Pick the best response and the worst. You earn credit for each, so spotting the response that would make things worse matters as much as finding the best.
Put all the responses in order from most to least effective. Near misses usually earn partial credit, so the order of the middle options counts too.
Rate every response on a scale such as “very ineffective” to “very effective”. Each rating is compared with the key, so there is no single right answer to the whole scenario.
“What should you do?” or “what is most effective?” asks what works best. “What would you do?” asks about your usual behavior. In the research, “should do” versions track reasoning ability more and “would do” versions track personality more, while both predict job performance about equally. [3]
Each area has a pattern behind the most effective responses, and a trap that costs people points.
Helping a colleague who is stuck, covering work fairly, and taking a team decision back to the person who owns it when it affects people who were not in the room.
Common trap: Say yes to every request. Helping is good only when you can deliver, and the person who runs the plan must know.
Warning people early when a plan is at risk, writing for what the reader has to do next, and moving a heated written exchange to a conversation.
Common trap: Sending more detail. The best message is the one the reader can act on, through the channel they asked for.
Keeping confidential information confidential, following a stated policy exactly, refusing to sign a record that is not true, and owning your errors.
Common trap: Being more cautious than the rules ask, or escalating before a direct word has had a chance.
Owning a problem even when the fix sits with another team, acting on what the customer has already told you, and putting things right when your company is at fault.
Common trap: Winning the argument. A customer who is right deserves a plain apology; one who is wrong still needs a solution.
Telling the right people early, stopping harm first, following an agreed procedure, and choosing "done" over "perfect" when a hard deadline arrives.
Common trap: Gambling on a quick fix of your own when a procedure, a client or a customer is waiting.
When researchers removed the situation descriptions from SJTs, between 43% and 71% of the items did not depend on them: general good sense was enough. [5] The scenarios in this test are written the other way round: a fact in the situation decides which response is best, so reading carefully pays. Seven rules help on any situational judgement test.
You get one point each time you choose the most effective response, out of 20. There is no penalty for a less effective choice, so never leave a scenario blank.
On an employer’s situational judgement test, the scoring key usually comes from the judgements of experienced people in the job, and your result is compared with other candidates. Each employer sets its own bar. Our guide to SHL scores explains norm groups and percentiles.
This practice test does not have a norm group yet, so it shows your raw score out of 20: no percentile, and never an IQ. What it tells you is just as useful for practice: how many scenarios you judged best, how far you got, and how long you took.
The first scenarios are the easiest. If you reach scenario 13 with about 10 minutes left, you have time to read the hardest ones properly.
About 75 seconds a scenario on average. The early ones are short and clear; the last ones have two strong responses and one fact that separates them.
Most effective response, one choice per scenario. Then start.
Aim to be past scenario 5. Read each scenario once, carefully, before the responses.
Scenarios 13 to 20 have close calls. Look for the fact that decides between the two best responses.
A less effective answer costs nothing. In the last minute, answer everything you skipped.
Preparation for an SJT is less about drilling and more about learning how employers think about good judgement, and practicing reading scenarios for the fact that matters.
Employers use situational judgement tests early in hiring, often online right after an application, for graduate schemes, public services, healthcare, sales and customer-facing jobs. An SJT shows how a candidate would handle the job’s everyday problems before anyone meets them.
SJTs are often combined with ability tests such as numerical, verbal or logical reasoning, and with interviews. They measure something different from reasoning tests: judgement about people and priorities rather than speed with patterns or numbers. SJTs about teamwork and leadership have shown some of the stronger links with overall job performance. [4]
A situational judgement test (SJT) shows you realistic work situations and asks which response would be most effective. It measures how you weigh up people, priorities, rules and customers at work, not what you know. Employers use SJTs to see how candidates would handle the everyday problems of the job.
20 workplace scenarios in 25 minutes, about 75 seconds each. There are four scenarios in each of five areas: teamwork, communication, integrity, customer focus and decisions under pressure. They start easy and get harder.
Yes. Taking the full 20-scenario test and seeing your score out of 20 is free, and so are the 10 sample questions with answers on this page. You enter a name and email so we can show and save your result; no payment or card is needed. A detailed report (score by area, scenario-by-scenario review, pace and a practice plan) and a printable certificate are optional and paid.
Judgement at work: how you handle teamwork, communication, honesty, customers and pressure. Research reviews find that most SJTs measure leadership and interpersonal skills, and that they predict job performance.
Each scenario has a scoring key, usually built from the judgements of experienced people in the job. On this test, one response in each scenario is the most effective; choosing it scores one point, out of 20. Some employer SJTs ask you to rank or rate every response and give partial credit for near misses.
Both. “Judgement” is the usual UK spelling and “judgment” the usual US spelling; the test is the same, and you will see both in job invitations and practice materials.
Read the instruction. “What is the most effective response?” and “what should you do?” ask what works best, which is what this test asks. “What would you do?” asks about your usual behavior; answer it honestly, because employers compare it with interviews and references.
Employers do not pass or fail an SJT on its own; they compare your score with other candidates or with a cut-off they set for the job. A low score on a practice test simply shows which kinds of situation to work on.
Partly. Many responses look sensible, which is what makes the test hard: usually two or three options are reasonable, and one fact in the scenario decides which is best, such as who owns the decision, a deadline, or a rule you were given. Reading those facts carefully is the skill.
Read the employer’s values or competency framework, practice timed scenarios, and study why the best answer beats the second best. The sample questions on this page come with full explanations; the full test shows where you lose points.
In hiring for graduate schemes, public services, healthcare, policing, retail and customer service, and in some university admissions. In the UK they are common in civil service and NHS training schemes.
Yes. The 10 sample questions on this page come with answers and full explanations, and the “Print or save as PDF” button under them saves all ten, with answers, as a PDF.
No. Casper is a separate situational judgement test used by some university admissions programs. This is an independent workplace practice test, not affiliated with Casper or its publisher, though the skill it practices, judging the most effective response, is similar.
No. A less effective response and a blank both score zero, so it is always better to answer. If a scenario is taking too long, skip it and come back before the 25 minutes run out.
On an employer SJT your result is usually compared with other candidates, and each employer sets its own bar. This practice test has no norm group yet, so it shows your raw score out of 20, never a percentile or an IQ. Use it to compare your own attempts and to find your weakest area.
No. Every scenario here was written by IQ Metrics, and IQ Metrics is not affiliated with any employer or test publisher. The format is the common single-best-answer type, so it is useful practice for most SJTs.
20 workplace scenarios, 25 minutes, easy to hard. Find a quiet spot, read each situation carefully, and see your score out of 20 free the moment you finish.
Start the 25-minute test →SHL, Watson-Glaser, CCAT and Casper are trademarks of their owners. IQ Metrics is not affiliated with, endorsed by or sponsored by any employer or test publisher. This is an independent practice test with original scenarios; its score is a practice score out of 20, not a publisher’s score and not an IQ.
