The SHL OPQ (Occupational Personality Questionnaire) is SHL’s workplace personality questionnaire. Its current version, the OPQ32r, measures 32 personality characteristics relevant to work using a forced choice format: you are shown blocks of statements and choose the ones most and least like you. There are no right or wrong answers. Employers use the resulting profile to understand how you prefer to work and how well that style fits the role.
What Is the SHL OPQ?
The OPQ is a self report personality questionnaire: you answer questions about your own preferences and typical behavior at work, and your responses are scored against SHL’s personality model. The output is a report that describes your workplace style across 32 characteristics.
Recruiters use the report to see how your preferred ways of working, relating to others and handling pressure line up with what a role demands. It is a measure of fit and style, not ability, and it is normally weighed alongside interviews, ability tests, experience and qualifications rather than used on its own.
What Does the OPQ Measure?
The OPQ measures 32 characteristics of workplace personality, grouped into three broad domains:
Relationships with people: how you relate to and influence others, covering characteristics such as how persuasive, outspoken, independent minded, outgoing, socially confident, modest, democratic and caring you are.
Thinking style: how you approach tasks and information, covering characteristics such as how comfortable you are with data and evaluation, how conventional or innovative you tend to be, how far ahead you plan, and how much weight you give to detail and rules.
Feelings and emotions: how you handle pressure and drive, covering characteristics such as how relaxed or worrying you tend to be, how optimistic, trusting and emotionally controlled you are, and how vigorous, competitive and achievement focused you are.
Your answers build a profile across all 32 scales. Employers compare that profile against the behaviors the role demands, so the same profile can be a strong match for one job and a weaker match for another.
SHL OPQ Format
The current standard version is the OPQ32r. It presents 104 forced choice questions, each a block of three statements: you choose the statement that is most like you and the statement that is least like you. The questionnaire is untimed, and most candidates finish in well under an hour.
This most and least format is deliberate. Because you must trade statements off against each other rather than rate each one in isolation, it is much harder to simply pick the answers you think the employer wants to see.
You may also see references to two older versions: the OPQ32i, an earlier forced choice questionnaire using blocks of four statements, and the OPQ32n, a normative version in which you rate individual statements on an agreement scale. Most employers now use the OPQ32r.
Is there a good score on the OPQ?
There is no pass mark and no specific good score. The OPQ describes your working style rather than grading it, and what counts as a desirable profile depends entirely on the role and the organization’s culture. The same characteristic can be an asset in one job and a drawback in another.
Are SHL OPQ assessments proctored?
The OPQ is completed online. Whether it is supervised depends on the employer and how the questionnaire fits into their wider selection process.
How Employers Use OPQ Results
Your report gives the employer a structured picture of your workplace style, and they typically use it in three ways:
- To assess fit, comparing your profile against the behaviors the role and team require.
- To shape interviews, using your profile to generate targeted follow up questions.
- To support development, since the same profile can inform onboarding, coaching and team building after hiring.
The OPQ is one selection tool among several. Employers weigh it alongside experience, skills, qualifications and any ability tests in the process, so a single characteristic on your report is very unlikely to decide the outcome by itself.
How to Prepare for the OPQ
You cannot revise for a personality questionnaire, but honest, focused preparation still makes a real difference:
Understand the format before the day
Forced choice questions feel unfamiliar the first time, because every option in a block may sound like you, or none of them may. Knowing that you are choosing the most and least accurate statements, not the most impressive ones, removes most of the pressure.
Reflect on your working style
Before you start, think of concrete recent examples of how you behave under pressure, in teams, with detail and with change. Answering from real examples keeps your responses accurate and consistent.
Answer in a work context
Base every answer on your typical behavior at work, not your social life and not your best ever day. The questionnaire is measuring your normal working style.
Be consistent, not strategic
Related statements recur through the questionnaire in different wording. Honest answers are naturally consistent; trying to project a persona introduces contradictions that undermine the reliability of your profile.
Do not answer as an imaginary ideal candidate
The forced choice format makes the OPQ hard to game, and there is no single ideal profile to imitate anyway. A distorted profile also risks winning you a role that fits you badly.
Practice similar questionnaires
Working through practice SHL style assessments, personality tests and situational judgement tests makes the question styles familiar, so on the day you can concentrate on answering truthfully rather than decoding the format.
