Assessments Galore

Some companies use a series of computer-based assessments to help narrow down the pool of job candidates.

Today, I took several assessments in 90 minutes that measured my reasoning ability, typing speed, general knowledge of working with computer files, and technical design test.

The position I am applying for is a highly technical position in the online printing industry that requires attention to detail, very strong technical ability, and a sharp individual.

Cognitive test

This test had questions like:
Do the words: ILLUSTRIOUS and ILLUSTRATE
a) have a similar meaning
b) have an opposite meaning
c) have neither similar nor opposite meanings

Simple math questions like, which is the smallest number:
3, 1, 0.7, 0.77 1.77

Some of the hardest questions were pairs of numbers and names that looked very similar, but almost every set was not identical, so it took more time to mentally process the right answer.

The cognitive test was 50 questions and I was told beforehand that people do not finish all 50 questions in the allotted 20 minutes. The questions got progressively more difficult, and at the end I had finished about 30 questions.

Typing Test

The typing test was taken on TypingTest.com
The Aesop's Fables option actually made the test pretty easy.
50 WPM with about 2-3 errors.

Personality assessment

Many "most like you" and "least like you" choices with number scales
for the other options. Some of the questions seemed very repetitive, maybe to gauge honest responses, and some of the pairs of descriptive words did not really seem to match up.

PC Basic Skills test

This included things such as:
- Making a folder on the desktop and renaming it
- Retrieving information from the web and putting it into a word processor
- Copying a file to a network location

PC Technical Test

I was shown a printed design created with Microsoft Visio and had to replicate the design to the best of my ability. I have never used Microsoft Visio before, but thanks to years of working with other Microsoft applications, it was pretty easy. I'm not sure how long it took me. It was probably no more than 20 minutes, but it felt like an eternity when I couldn't find a couple of the options that I needed.