Aptitude tests are used for the evaluation of a person’s cognitive skills and character profile. They are increasingly used in recruitment to help hiring managers streamline their applicants. It’s the efficiency and accuracy of aptitude testing compared with hiring methods like interviewing that has made them so popular.

Aptitude tests assess a person’s skills, abilities, professional attitude, and personality traits. There is a whole range of aptitude tests and the challenges you’ll face will depend on each. They’ll involve a combination of maths, verbal concepts, abstract thinking, field-specific reasoning problems (financial, mechanical, etc), personality tests, and others.

Aptitude tests measure a huge range of skills such as numerical aptitude, language comprehension and logical thinking. Different aptitude tests measure different aptitudes and employers specifically hand-pick aptitude tests to reveal the traits they’re looking for. Aptitude tests in the financial industry will be totally different to those in healthcare.

Employers use aptitude tests due to analyze a potential worker’s profile. The test results are a strong predictor of how an employee will perform and fit in with the rest of the company. For instance, there are tests that estimate how well a potential hire will work in a team, or how strong their communication and problem-solving skills are.

Aptitude tests are very common in the modern recruitment industry. Almost every big enterprise uses such tests as an additional tool for employee selection. Smaller companies often follow the practices of bigger business and are currently adopting aptitude tests as well. It is fair to assume that the majority of employers are using aptitude tests for HR purposes.

Aptitude tests are hard as they’re used to filter and differentiate candidates. By making them hard, assessors get a spread of results that provides a far more revealing view of test-takers. Some tests are made deliberately difficult to reveal how a potential hire performs under stress, or when facing unfamiliar information.

You’ll find many resources for practicing aptitude tests online. We suggest trying a handful to see which works for you. Feel free to begin with our full catalogue of premium practice tests – they’re all based on actual past questions. You can also use our fully worked solutions and interactive step by step practice mode to prepare and familiarize.