Succeed at psychometric tests

By Christian Warren, Senior Careers Adviser

This insight is part of our career wellbeing series.

The psychometric tests used by employers as part of a recruitment process can feel daunting. Often, when people hear the word ‘test’, they immediately think ‘pass’ and ‘fail’. Actually, mostly ‘fail’.

As human beings, we’re hardwired to crave feeling connected with others – and if we’re being honest, a lot of what we do in our daily lives is to avoid feeling judged and rejected by people. So, perhaps the worry people experience when applying for jobs stems from this innate fear of rejection – including when taking a psychometric test.

How we might feel

On some level we fear that by ‘failing’ the test, we’re being rejected by the organisation. They’ve deemed us not good enough. We may also fear that others will judge us, such as peers or family.

This concern may be particularly strong if you:

• have had a negative experience with tests or exams in the past
• feel that the tests target your weaknesses, such as ‘I’m not very good at maths’
• put pressure on yourself because it’s a role that you really want, or you worry that you’re not ‘good enough’ if you don’t get this type of job
• don’t have any experience of psychometric tests and aren’t sure what to expect

There are things you can do to improve your confidence and skills

1. Understand what a psychometric test is

Answer: a test commonly used by recruiters to assess your skills, knowledge, or personality. Common types include verbal or numerical reasoning tests, situational judgement tests, or personality questionnaires. They're often taken online during the preliminary screening stage of a recruitment process. Most tests are timed, but some can be completed in multiple sittings.

2. Use the resources on our website

These include practise tests that give detailed feedback. This is beneficial because, firstly, you may surprise yourself with what you’ve done well at, and secondly, it gives you some very specific areas to focus on if you wish to improve, which is a lot more manageable than a general feeling of overwhelm. In addition, the more you practise, the more familiar you’ll become with how tests work, removing some of the uncertainty that contributes to worry.

There’s also information on our website for students with a disability that might affect their ability to do the tests.

3. Familiarise yourself with what the organisation is looking for.

Look closely at the job description, what skills do they ask for? While tests like situational judgement are designed so that you can’t ‘game’ the system by putting what you think is the answer the company are looking for instead of your honest answer, having a better understanding of what the employer is looking for can help focus your mind.

4. Take time to read the questions properly.

Don’t just rush into analysing a situation or the data. In pressured situations, perhaps when there’s a timer, it’s easy to accidentally answer the question we think there is, and not the question there actually is. It may help to quickly write down two to three keywords from the questions to focus your mind.

And remember...

Remember that these tests are tailored to individual organisations. So, if you don’t pass a test for a particular company, sometimes it just means it wasn’t the right thing for you at this time – especially if there were situational judgement assessments involved.

It’s not the organisation rejecting you personally. It also doesn’t mean that you’re terrible at psychometric tests, you probably just need to practise a particular aspect more for next time.

For more advice and guidance on psychometric tests, plus access to FREE practise tests as a UoN student or graduate, visit our website.

First published February 2022. Updated December 2025.