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Lots of employers use situational judgement tests during their recruitment stage, particularly at graduate level. Here we explain to candidates what they are, how they work and what to expect in your situational judgement test. Basically SJTs measure your behaviour and attitudes to work-related scenarios. With a bit of insider knowledge you will have nothing to fear.

So what are situational judgement tests and how do they work?

Situational Judgement Tests (or ‘SJTs’, as they are often abbreviated to) come in a great variety of guises and have been growing in popularity as an assessment method since the late nineties. Currently organisations as diverse as Waitrose, the NHS, PricewaterhouseCoopers, Sony, Wal-Mart, Deloitte, John Lewis, the law firm Herbert Smith, the Fire Service and many more, are using SJTs as part of their recruitment process.

Situational judgement tests present candidates with a range of different situations that they might experience in the job for which they are applying. For each situation, a number of possible actions are suggested. There are usually around 4 or 5 actions but this varies. It is the candidate’s job to choose between these possible options and judge which is the most effective course of action to take and therefore which action they would take if faced with this situation. SJTs are always multiple-choice; no answers other than the options listed are allowed.

The situations (or scenarios as they are sometimes called) are almost always reflective of a real-life aspect of the job.