Train your brain

Can a new book really improve your performance on psychometric tests? John Crace finds out

Tuesday December 7, 2004
The Guardian

Imagine you're a company looking to take on four graduate trainees and you get 1,700 applications. How do you make your choices? You can sift through the covering letters and CVs and reject 1,600 fairly quickly, but even then you'll be left with 100 applicants of similar aptitude and ability which need to be knocked down to a shortlist of 10 for interview.

The final selection is a two-edged sword. You want to make sure the best people get the jobs but, equally, you want the process to be as transparent as possible so that those who miss out know why. This is where psychometric tests come in.

The premise is quite straightforward. For roughly half-an-hour, candidates are asked to answer a series of multiple-choice questions based on either diagrammatic, numerical or verbal reasoning - depending on the employer's requirements - and the final scores are then compared. The tests measure speed and accuracy of thought rather than general knowledge. There's no advantage to be gained by mugging up and cheating is impossible: it's just a straight contest of ability.

At least, that's always been the conventional wisdom. But check through the self-help sections of your local Waterstone's and you'll find a book suggesting otherwise: Sam Al-Jajjoka's How to Pass Professional Level Psychometric Tests. Al-Jajjoka is a course team leader and senior lecturer at Uxbridge College's school of IT and computing, a member of the faculty advisory committee for the technology department at Buckinghamshire Chilterns University College and an external examiner for the exam board, Edexcel. So he knows a thing or two about landing a job.

In the past couple of years, though, there have been plenty more jobs that Al-Jajjoka has turned down.

"So many of my students were telling me that employers were asking them to undergo psychometric tests," he says, "and I realised there was very little literature available showing them what to expect and how to do well. So I decided to do something about it myself. I got my hands on as many different papers as possible. Sometimes I would even apply for jobs I didn't want, just to be able to take a particular test."

The result is a book that details the different types of question likely to be asked and gives tips on how best to spot what is required. It has 500 practice questions and makes valuable suggestions about timekeeping.

"A lot of the pressure is about time," Al-Jajjoka says.

"Most candidates would be able to get every question right if they had five minutes for each one but, in general, they have about 10 to 15 seconds per question. So they must learn to think quickly and, where appropriate, to make intelligent guesses."

The book has certainly gone down well with the punters. Al-Jajjoka says he has had dozens of letters from grateful, successful jobseekers and the Amazon review section contains emails telling a similar story. What is more surprising is that the book also gets some professional endorsement from those you might expect to have a vested interest in trashing it.

The British Psychological Society confirms that familiarisation with psychometric testing can pay dividends for applicants - a view endorsed by SHL, one of the leading suppliers of psychometric tests to industry.

"Whenever we send out papers to companies," said a spokesperson, "we enclose some practice ones for them to pass on to candidates to give them a feel for what is expected. The aim is to test people's general abilities, not to catch them out."

However, he goes on to point out that familiarisation is not the same as being given a crib for the answers.

"Of course there are certain styles of question that make different demands. But there are no short cuts. Take verbal reasoning. You're generally given a piece of text and then asked to agree, disagree - or say you have insufficient information to tell one way or another - with various statements.

"You can't prepare for this kind of thing in advance, other than to have had sufficient practice to realise you need to read the text carefully and not jump to quick conclusions because nine times out of 10 they will be wrong. So these self-help books are really just good common sense."