Welcome to our free situational judgement test practice questions! We have added some free questions to our site so that you can get a glimpse of what a real situational judgement test will typically look like. The only way to tackle these types of tests and become good at them is to practice, so make the most of these free questions and use our explanations to help you improve your performance.
At a recent departmental meeting one of your more senior colleagues appears to be acting intentionally awkward towards you. Whenever you make suggestions relating to the topic area being discussed they interrupt you and come up with reasons why your suggestion is not workable. You have known this person since you joined the business six months ago and you have always got on well. They have been with the company for over 2 years and seem to be well respected by most people. You have heard rumours that they are having personal issues at the moment. You are only 1 hour into an all-day meeting. What would you do?
A) Wait until the next coffee break and ask the colleagues you are closer to whether they have noticed this behaviour and ask for their thoughts on how to deal with the situation, particularly considering the delicacy of the personal issues that may be ongoing for the individual concerned. B) Ignore their behaviour and continue to input to the meeting in a confident and supportive manner. This will show your peers and manager that you can handle difficult situations and as you have always got along well with this person in the past this is probably a one-off. Everyone has bad days and as a colleague it is up to you to not make anyone feel worse than they do already. C) Attempt to face the problem head on in the meeting. The situation is reflecting badly on you and you do not want your line manager to think that you can’t stand up to someone just because they have more experience than you. Wait to see if it happens again and then politely ask whether they have an issue with you that they would like to discuss in more detail. D) Wait until the coffee break and then ask the person you are having the issues with if they could spare five minutes for a chat. Politely ask them whether you have done something to offend them as you feel their attitude towards you this morning has been somewhat negative. Ask if there is something you can do to improve the situation as it is making the meeting awkward for everyone.
A) Least likely. This response could make the problem worse on a number of levels. Firstly, you have flagged the issue to people who do not really need to be involved. By talking about your colleague with these people you are potentially making the issue bigger than it was initially as they will be looking for any signs of the problem continuing or getting bigger. Secondly, you are bringing up someone else’s personal issues that are of no concern to your other colleagues regardless of how well you get on with them. D) Most likely. This approach ensures that the problem is addressed before it becomes any worse. As there may be a genuine reason why they are obstructing your suggestions it shows that you are willing to listen to and learn from other people. It also does so in a non-public forum so that you can both share your views freely.
A key supplier has allocated a new account manager to look after your business. However, you do not feel that they are providing as good a service as the previous account manager did. They keep forgetting to follow up on agreed actions and are missing mutually agreed deadlines. You feel like they have become complacent. You are happy with the products they provide and the original account manager was part of a team that went through a complex tender process to win your business but you feel customer service could now be better. What do you do?
A) Wait for the next meeting with the account manager and raise your concerns with them directly. Go to the meeting prepared with a list of issues that you have experienced so that you can jointly agree a plan for improving service. B) Raise your concerns with your own line manager so that they can escalate the issue at the right level within the supply company. C) Start looking for alternative suppliers who might be more appreciative of your business. D) Bide your time but keep track of issues when they arise. The account manager has only just started looking after you and they may just need time to get used to you.
A) Most likely. This approach attempts to keep the longer-term relationship with the supplier in mind. By raising your concerns early on with the account manager it gives you both an opportunity to try and make the relationship work in the longer-term. In many businesses suppliers are regarded as partners and it is important to find a way to work together towards common goals. C) Least likely. This approach fails to recognise the importance of suppliers as partners. It is increasingly important in business that we build strong relationships with our suppliers to ensure that that both parties gain the maximum benefit from the relationship. You already recognise that the products are superior; it just takes some effort to set expectations and create a positive relationship with the existing supplier.
You are working in a small team as part of your training with a firm of surveyors. You overhear one of your more senior colleagues on the phone to a client. It is clear that they are having a disagreement which results in your colleague raising their voice and giving them some information which you know to be incorrect. Your colleague is usually fantastic with clients and is well respected across the business but you know they have been having personal problems recently. At the end of the call you ask your colleague if they are ok and whether they’d like to talk but they tell you to keep out of it and that they know what they are doing. What do you do?
A) Call the client back as soon as you get chance to try and smooth over the situation on behalf of your colleague. B) Talk to your manager as soon as you can and explain what you observed so that the situation can be rectified as soon as possible. C) Accept that your colleague is more senior than you and that they must know what they are doing. D) Give your colleague some time to calm down and then ask them if they’d like to join you for a coffee. Give them a chance to discuss the call and if that doesn’t generate an appropriate response, talk to your manager.
C) Least likely. By accepting the behaviour of your colleague you are condoning the way they spoke to the client and this brings the risk of losing that client. It can be hard to give feedback to a more senior colleague but the relationship with the client is vital. D) Most likely. The customer’s satisfaction is of upmost importance and the ideal situation would be for your colleague to smooth things over themselves. This approach gives them the opportunity to talk things through with you and then to speak to the client themselves. If that fails, you know you can always talk to your manager.
You are working as a graduate trainee in an online retail business. Part of your role is being involved in many cross-organisational projects. One such project involves people from a number of different departments as well as a smaller retail company with whom you are partnering. You have been project managing it from the outset and so far it has been going well. Unfortunately, one of the key team members from the partner company has gone off sick with a long-term illness so a replacement was brought in to join the project team a month ago. You have noticed that from the start this replacement is not acting as efficiently as her colleague did. She keeps turning up to meetings late and is not delivering on everything that has been asked of her. She is very experienced in her field though and was brought into the project as she had delivered work of this nature before. What do you do?
A) Prior to the next project meeting, arrange a call with the team member in question to discuss your concerns directly and to agree what your joint expectations are around the project. B) Ask the team member’s line manager for an ‘off the record’ conversation and raise your concerns about her, outlining the key issues and the observations you have made. C) Speak to other members of the project team to try asking them what their perceptions are of the team member in question. D) Give her a chance to improve by herself but continue to take note of the times the team member is late and the issues she fails to deliver on for a few more weeks.
A) Most likely. By talking to the team member in question you are attempting to keep the project and the relationship on track at the same time as dealing with the issues that you have been observing. In business, it is important to find ways to work with partners of this nature but doing so openly and fairly is the correct way to go. You obviously have common targets and it is important to both partners that you achieve them! C) Least likely. Whilst you may think it is more fair to get a balanced view from across the project team this could be seen as undermining and even ‘gossipy’. It is more fair to speak to the person in question yourself rather than bringing other people into the conversation. Having the longer term relationship with this partner in mind is also key therefore it is important to treat their staff fairly.
Over the last few days you have been analysing the sales figures from the branch where you work and looking at how they compare to the sales figures of similar branches within the business from the last three months. The branch manager has requested you do this and come back to her with some key conclusions and recommendations for improvements. You can see that your own branch always experiences a major dip in sales in the third week of the month but the same is not true for the other branches.
A) Speak to the branch manager to find out whether she has any ideas about why this may be so. B) Record the dip as a key finding in your conclusions when you present them back to the branch manager. C) Look at data beyond the initial three-month period and try and interrogate the data from other angles before deciding on next steps. D) Arrange to speak to the other branch managers about what you have seen in order to try and understand how their branches are not experiencing this same dip.
B) Least likely. It is a fact that the dip is there and you have seen this in your data, however, you have been asked to report on key conclusions and recommendations. By reporting this back to the branch manager you are merely presenting her with a problem. In business it is important to think analytically and to examine available data (and people!) to be able to draw conclusions and make recommendations. C) Most likely. This is a really good place to take your analysis. Three months is a pretty short period to base your conclusions on, so it is sensible to look beyond that to see if it is a longer term pattern. Also, data can be cut and sliced in many ways so it is always useful to rethink your approach to analysis to see if that can help you draw sensible conclusions.
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