Written by Kevin Thompson, Careers Consultant

Situational judgement tests ask you to imagine you are in the workplace and require you to decide how you will deal with a challenge you are facing. Employers use situational judgement tests to see if you hold the approach and values that are key to the role that they are looking for. Doing the test can also be an indicator for you to decide if this is the sort of job you would like to be doing.

The Civil Service situational test contains twenty-five scenarios and you have to choose the action you are most likely to take and the one least likely to choose.

Four top tips to pass:

• Complete the five practice questions on the Civil Service Website. As these will give you the correct answers you can get a good sense of the sort of fast stream behaviours the Civil Service is looking for- and what they are not looking for. You can access some practice questions before applying to the fast stream on the Civil Service website
• Get a sense of the sort of values and behaviours the Civil Service is looking for from their competencies document . This can give you more clues on how fast streamers approach work and solve problems
• The test is not timed so don’t rush! Take your time to think. You can also go back during the test and change your answers if you want to
• Read each scenario very carefully. Look at the way the situation is described – what words are used? Does that give any hints? Think about the impact of your choices – will they show initiative, are they positive, do they support others, do they take into account the challenges in the question? The description and language used may well give clues as to what is the appropriate action

More information can be found on the Civil Service website.