Free situational judgement test

Free situational judgement test online: 16 workplace scenarios on priorities, communication, integrity and collaboration, with the reasoning behind every answer.

FREE PRACTICE · NEW QUESTIONS EVERY ATTEMPT

Situational judgement test

Choose the most effective first response in each workplace scenario. Assume an ordinary professional setting and use any stated policy. Sixteen original scenarios; the explanations give our editorial rationale, not a universal employer answer key.

16 questions16 minutes48 in the bank

Choose your pace Timed practice · 16 minutes Learn at your pace · no countdown

Each attempt draws 16 of 48 questions, and a retake avoids the ones you have just seen. One point per correct answer, no penalty for guessing. Skip and return to questions; answers and explanations appear after you finish. Your progress stays on this page until you reload or leave.

What a situational judgement test measures

A situational judgement test, or SJT, presents a short workplace scenario and asks which response is most effective. It is used for graduate schemes, civil service and NHS recruitment, customer-facing roles and management pipelines, because it predicts how someone handles competing priorities, difficult conversations and grey areas better than a personality questionnaire does. There are no facts to recall. The test asks what you would do first, and why that beats the alternatives.

The scenarios here cover four skills that most employer SJTs sample:

Prioritisation: two deadlines, one afternoon, and a request that arrives just before you leave.
Communication: bad news, vague feedback, a client who wants an answer you do not have yet.
Integrity: gifts from suppliers, expenses, timesheets, confidential pricing.
Collaboration: a colleague who misses handovers, a group converging on a flawed decision, credit for shared work.

How this free test works

16 original scenarios in 16 minutes, four per skill, drawn per attempt from a bank of 48. A retake excludes the scenarios you saw last time.
Single most effective response. Each scenario offers four realistic actions. One is the best first step; the other three are things reasonable people do that cost more than they save.
A stated rationale for every answer, so you can see the principle behind the key rather than just the letter.
Timed or untimed. The clock matters less here than in aptitude tests, but it stops you over-thinking.
A four-skill breakdown on your result.
An optional shareable result with a permanent link, preview image and an Add to LinkedIn profile button.

Example situational judgement questions

You discover a likely error in a report due in an hour. A colleague suggests sending it now to meet the deadline. What should you do?

Send it now and mention the suspected error in the covering note.
Check the suspected error promptly, alert the report’s owner and agree a corrected delivery time if needed.
Fix the error yourself and send the report late without telling anyone.
Remove the doubtful section and send the rest on time.

The best first step is 2. A known error sent on time becomes the reader’s problem; a silent late fix hides the delay; cutting the section changes the report without anyone agreeing to it. Checking quickly and telling the owner keeps the decision with the person accountable for it.

A supplier offers you a valuable personal gift during a purchasing decision. Accepting it and “deciding on merit anyway” is the tempting wrong answer. The best response is to disclose the offer and follow the gifts and conflicts policy, because the problem is not your intent but how the decision looks to everyone else.

How to improve your situational judgement score

Find the immediate problem. Most scenarios contain one thing that must happen first: a fact to check, a person to inform, an approval to obtain. Options that skip it lose.
Prefer proportionate responses. Escalating to a manager for a reversible mistake and handling a data breach alone are both wrong for the same reason.
Keep the decision with its owner. Fixing other people’s work silently, or making calls outside your authority, scores badly even when the outcome is fine.
Communicate early, not perfectly. A holding reply with a time commitment beats a complete answer sent late.
Read the wrong options too. In employer tests the “least effective” choice is often asked as well, and learning why an option is weak is half the skill.

Reading your result

Your percentage is the share of the 16 scenarios where you chose the keyed response. The result guide explains the score ranges and the four skills. The score measures agreement with a stated rationale, not personality, cultural fit or predicted performance, and a real employer’s policy can change the best response. It is unsupervised practice, not a certificate.

Critical thinking test: reasoning about arguments and evidence rather than workplace situations.
Attention to detail test: the checking skill behind “verify the facts first”.
Big Five personality test: the self-report questionnaire employers often pair with an SJT.

Frequently asked questions

Is this situational judgement test free?

Yes. All 16 scenarios, the score, the four-skill breakdown, the rationale for every answer and a public result link are free, with no account or email address.

Situational judgement or situational judgment?

Both spellings are common. British employers and the NHS write situational judgement test; American employers write situational judgment test, usually shortened to SJT. The format is the same.

Is there a right answer in a situational judgement test?

Employer SJTs are keyed by their own managers and occupational psychologists, so the best response reflects that organisation's expectations. This test states its editorial rationale for every scenario: check facts first, communicate early, act within your authority and keep records honest. Where a real employer's policy differs, its policy wins.

Do the scenarios repeat on a retake?

No. Each attempt draws four scenarios per skill from a bank of 48 and excludes the ones you saw last time.

What format do employer SJTs use?

Most ask you to pick the most effective response, to pick the most and least effective, or to rank all four. This test uses the single most effective response. If you are preparing for a ranking format, practise by ordering all four options before you check the answer.