A situational judgement test (SJT) is a recruitment assessment that describes realistic situations you might face in a job and asks you to judge how well different responses would deal with them. There are no sums or general knowledge questions. The test measures your judgement: how you prioritise, how you treat colleagues and customers, and whether you act with integrity. Employers use it to see whether your instincts match the way the role needs to be done.
The quickest way to understand the format is to try a few scenarios in a free situational judgement test, where each answer comes with an explanation of why it scores the way it does.
What SJT means
SJT is short for situational judgement test. You will also see it spelled “situational judgment test”, which is the American spelling, and occasionally called a judgement test or a scenario-based assessment. They all describe the same thing: a set of workplace scenarios, each followed by a list of possible actions for you to evaluate.
What a situational judgement question looks like
Each question has three parts: a short scenario, a list of possible responses, and an instruction telling you what to do with them. Here is a typical example.
You work in a busy customer service team. A customer phones to say an order promised for today has not arrived. Your system shows it was dispatched late and will arrive tomorrow. The customer is upset because the order is a gift for an event this evening.
Choose the most effective and the least effective response.
- A. Apologise, explain that it will arrive tomorrow, and end the call politely.
- B. Apologise, explain what happened, and check whether there is any way to get the item to them today or offer a suitable alternative.
- C. Tell the customer the delay was caused by the courier, not your company.
- D. Transfer the call to your manager straight away.
The most effective response is B. It is honest, it takes ownership, and it tries to solve the customer’s actual problem. The least effective is C, because shifting blame does nothing for the customer and reflects badly on the business. A is polite but passive, and D hands over a problem you could have started to resolve yourself.
You can see more scenarios like this, with full answers, in our situational judgement test examples.
What situational judgement tests measure
Each scenario is written to test one or two of the qualities the employer has decided matter most for the role. These are often called competencies, and the common ones are:
- Working with others: supporting colleagues, handling disagreement and sharing information.
- Customer focus: understanding what a customer needs and resolving problems properly.
- Integrity: honesty, fairness and following rules when it would be easier not to.
- Planning and prioritising: deciding what matters most when several things need doing at once.
- Resilience: staying calm and effective under pressure or after a setback.
- Taking responsibility: owning a mistake or a problem rather than passing it on.
Because the scenarios are built around these competencies, the job description is one of the best clues to what a particular test is looking for.
How SJTs are presented
Most SJTs are taken online. The scenarios are usually written, but some employers use short videos or animations of a workplace situation. The response formats vary too:
- Most and least effective: pick the best and the worst option from a list.
- Rate each response: score every option on a scale, such as very effective to very ineffective.
- Rank the responses: put every option in order from best to worst.
- Pick one: choose the single response you think is best, or the one you would most likely take.
Read the instruction for every question, because the same test can switch between formats. Our guide to how SJT scores work explains how each format is marked.
How an SJT differs from other tests
An SJT is not an aptitude test. A numerical or verbal reasoning test has answers you can prove. An SJT has a scoring key, usually agreed by people who know the job well, that says which responses are more effective than others. Your score depends on how closely your judgement matches that key.
It is not a personality test either, although the two are sometimes confused. A personality questionnaire asks about your general preferences and has no better or worse answers. An SJT asks how effective a specific action would be in a specific situation, and some answers do score better than others.
Time pressure is also different. Many SJTs are untimed or have a generous time limit, because the employer wants considered answers rather than quick ones. Check your invitation to see what applies to your test.
Who uses situational judgement tests
SJTs are used across the private and public sectors. They are common in graduate schemes, customer-facing roles, retail and hospitality management, financial services, the police, the civil service and healthcare. They often sit alongside numerical and verbal reasoning tests at an early stage of the process, and sometimes the scenarios are written specifically for one employer.
Can you prepare for an SJT?
Yes. You cannot learn the answers in advance, but you can learn how the questions work. Practise with realistic scenarios so the formats feel familiar, read the employer’s values and the job description, and get into the habit of reading every instruction carefully. When you review practice questions, focus on why the keyed answer is better, because the same reasoning comes up again and again.
Our situational judgement test tips cover the habits that make the biggest difference. Then put them into practice with a situational judgement practice test.
