Criteria Cognitive Aptitude test - 2nd stage

[kai]

Been sent a link to complete a Criteria Cognitive Aptitude test. Has anyone done one of these before.

CCAT contains 50 questions and the time allotted is 15 minutes. So it looks like I need to work quickly, accurately and if I get stuck I should errr ... guess?

Has anyone completed one of these before? Do you have any tips!

Just done a quick practise run, I didn't exactly go that well.

 

[datalol-jack]

Been sent a link to complete a Criteria Cognitive Aptitude test. Has anyone done one of these before.

CCAT contains 50 questions and the time allotted is 15 minutes. So it looks like I need to work quickly, accurately and if I get stuck I should errr ... guess?

Has anyone completed one of these before? Do you have any tips!

Just done a quick practise run, I didn't exactly go that well.

I assume this is for joining the military?

If you're penalised for guessing -- don't guess. If not, skip questions you draw a blank on; try again at the end, guess if not penalised for doing so. A few armed forced folks on here can probably offer more in-depth advice. It should not generally require more than school level education and reasonable reading speed and comprehension. I believe the MOD hosts practice quizzes online these days. Try to find them.

 

[kai]

I assume this is for joining the military?

Nope' it's for a large IT firm.

It's more like an IQ test - example question from the practise run I just did.

Six years ago Annabelle was twice as old as Jason was. Now, Annabelle is four years older than Jason. How old is Jason now?

A: 8
B 10
C: 14
D: 4

Question seems fine, when you have time to reflect and read correctly but 50 of these in 15 minutes is tough going!

Then other questions are which shape matches, this if turned on it's side etc while others are focused on things like:

ASSENT is the opposite of

AGREEMENT
CLIMB
COOPERATION
REFUSAL
NEGATION

 

[Rids]

A lot of those things there is no expectation that you will complete the full set of questions.

 

[datalol-jack]

Nope' it's for a large IT firm.

It's more like an IQ test - example question from the practise run I just did.

Six years ago Annabelle was twice as old as Jason was. Now, Annabelle is four years older than Jason. How old is Jason now?

A: 8
B 10
C: 14
D: 4

Question seems fine, when you have time to reflect and read correctly but 50 of these in 15 minutes is tough going!

Then other questions are which shape matches, this if turned on it's side etc while others are focused on things like:

ASSENT is the opposite of

AGREEMENT
CLIMB
COOPERATION
REFUSAL
NEGATION

Ahh, fair dos, kai. The acronym rang of something military, but it appears to be just a package of tests HR people buy from some US company. Not to worry. Under various names, I've done a few of these aptitude juggles over the years, and they are both much easier and closer to practice questions than people think. What you have here is a standardised literacy and numeracy test, proxying for intelligence. Although vocabulary checks are a tad cheeky in this regard.

A few tips then:

-- You have a couple of minutes per question -- use them, and read each question twice.
-- Don't be a hero and use pen and paper if allowed; you'd be surprised at gaffes people make under stress.
-- Scan for relevant information but do not be lead by the answers: they include common errors people make from misreading the problems.
-- Leave difficult/longer questions you cannot immediately answer; likewise if you'd spent 3 minutes on getting an answer not in the list of options -- do not go down a negative spiral -- you will waste time.
-- My personal strategy was always: language, logic, arithmetic/algebra, probability and then patterns and situations.
-- You may find a different sequence plays to your strengths better, as most of these tests can be taken in any order.
-- When finished with the questions you are certain about, come back, look at the time, and proceed with either: (a) guess if not penalised for doing so; (b) if you have enough time, do try to calmly go through the wording and reason through the remaining problems; (c) if penalised for guessing, do what you can with the extra time on the questions you can make at least some progress on -- don't worry about the blanks you really don't know.
-- If taking the test at home, without restrictions on your internet use or other technology, do use the tools available, but be mindful of the time it takes.
-- You don't have to get them all right nor are expected to, in most cases; the key is getting more than an average result for the test (normally 24-28 questions right for a technical job, and doing X standard deviations [1-2 questions per level] to get up to a standard the company interviews); no penalties for being a top dog though.

Example of a question you should probably skip at first passing:

You're in prison, one hundred inmates in total, and are told that you will be set free if you win a simple game: there's a room with a lever in it which you can only flip on and off; inmates will be picked at random and lead into this room one at a time with no means to communicate after the game starts; should you think everyone's been to the room at least once, you can tell the guard, who will set you all free if the shout is correct, and gas you if not. You are given time to discuss strategy before the game begins. What's your plan for winning the game?

It's a probability thing and the answer is online for an insane variety of the situation and wordings. So you're unlikely to find something like this on a test any more, but be wary of wordy word problems that expect a trick to crack them!

Good luck!

 

[NarChaDBaueR]

Be careful about using the internet or any extra tools to help, they recently introduced these at our company (large IT firm) and you have to do a 2nd CCAT on site with a HR representative present or via webcam with one on the other end.

 

[HangTime]

50 questions and the time allotted is 15 minutes

-- You have a couple of minutes per question -- use them, and read each question twice.

Overall you've given some good advice, but I make that 18s per question on average, not a couple of minutes

Given that simply reading and understanding the question could easily take half the alloted time, in that scenario assuming no failure for guessing I would absolutely blitz it - first pass I would only attempt question I was confident on from the initial reading, then do a second pass to fill in the gaps.

As an aside, in my opinion the allotted time is too short based on the example questions given unless they are specifically trying to find people who can handle them extremely quickly under pressure. In the vast majority of jobs, you'd not need to do that. I expect what you'd find is lots of people of varying ability getting mediocre scores but increase the time limit to 30-60mins and you would start to see the cream rising to the top.

I mean take that age question for example. I have a degree in Mathematics and that question would probably take me at least 20s to read, comprehend and answer - and that is an area I am good at, there would probably be some other questions less well suited. So unless you have practiced the exact structure of question (kinda like you do for school exams) you would actually need to spend at least 5s deciding on the correct way to approach it (e.g. writing it out as an equation and then solving it) before you actually attempt to answer it.

 

[datalol-jack]

Overall you've given some good advice, but I make that 18s per question on average, not a couple of minutes

Do as I say, not as I do.

Sorry, was doing something else at the time. But yes, blitzing for easy points is a must; thus accumulating valuable seconds towards the end. Things like:

ASSENT is the opposite of

AGREEMENT
CLIMB
COOPERATION
REFUSAL
NEGATION

Should take a couple of seconds at most, for example.

 

[datalol-jack]

OP should've been done by now.

I wouldn't rush through questions like that. If they do they'll slip up on easy questions... eg. there where they'll try to catch out people rushing through (and with poor vocabularies ) with their homophone trick. Why spend two seconds when you have eighteen... there's time there to think about it briefly, not rush, and still be below the average time you have. More haste, less speed, and all that. Sure, you can get it correct in two seconds, but if another few seconds significantly lowers the odds of stupid mistakes on similar questions - which I guess it would - then it's worth being somewhat careful.

They're cheeky questions. But I wouldn't worry about the recall ones too much: you either know a synonym or an antonym or you don't; same for definitions. Recall should be almost instant and is triggered by letter patterns and context (the reason most people don't struggle with reading words with missing or misplaced characters).

Although it's worth taking extra care with category comparisons and scrambled words, like:

What does the anagram CPIFAIC refer to?

 

[datalol-jack]

I do like how these tests are always timed, but the projects you work on invariably take ages, are planned badly and overrun.

 

[Ben Cole]

Reminds me of my tests to get into ATC 20 years ago.

They gave you sample questions, 5 to do in 3 minutes. Then at the actual tests it was 50 in 20 minutes.

Immediately you knew the pressure was on with less time for each question than you were expecting. Some people just cracked and walked out. Cunning stuff, weeded out people that couldn't handle pressure straight away.

 

[datalol-jack]

Some of these tests branch and increase exponentially in difficulty for each measured component, until you can't basically do any more of a particular subtask given the constrains. They are of questionable utility however. And I think they're more prevalent across the Atlantic than here, pretty much like all intelligence/standardised testing anyway.

But I hope OP did well.

 

[FishThrower]

Do people really waste their time doing tests like these?

What IT job is this for? A Dev? Support ?

 

[datalol-jack]

Do people really waste their time doing tests like these?

What IT job is this for? A Dev? Support ?

Sadly. Although there's the option of saying no. A general aptitude test could cover a whole swathe of positions, and ideally shouldn't be the only thing a large HR department uses to whittle down candidates for the final interview stages.

 

[Scrutinize]

For future ref, in the limited time sets you are expected to attempt as many as possible.

Your aptitude is measured by a) how many you attempt b) the type of questions you leave blank not necessarily get wrong eg English vocab c) your actual score measured by the profile of right answers.

A person could get 30 right but could score less (weighted score) overall than someone getting 25 right depending on the criteria set by the role.

1) scan the whole paper through first (20 sec) 2) first pass for guaranteed correct answers and leave the time consuming questions out (8 min) 3) scan paper for missing answers and sense check (40sec) 4) second pass for missing answers on easy questions and by now you should have 80% complete (2 min) 5) final pass for the hard questions that require guesses (1min) 6) final pass for the questions needing calculations (1min)

The above should get you 90-95% completion coverage.

Poor academic/language performers will score sub 50% completion and could get 5%-20% of completed correct.

People not used to doing these when intelligent will score sub 30% completion but 90% of completed correct.

Intelligent people with average English (e.g. non first language) skills will get 30-60% completion if they are used to them and 50-70% of completed correct.

The better candidates will get 90%+ completion with 75%+ correct.

Do not attempt questions requiring more than a few seconds to answer until your final pass throughs.

 

[HangTime]

See that type of testing annoys me, as it appears to be as much about familiarity with the type of test as it is capability to tackle the test once you know the mechanics. While I can appreciate that a test may be specifically structured a certain way to glean insights about the candidate, it isn't a level playing field if some candidates know how it will be marked, and others don't. In other words, some candidates may be able to alter their behaviour based on that information whereas others don't.

I once sat a similar(?) test as part of a job application (prior to the interview), nothing was explained about the relative weightings of accuracy / questions attempted etc. I just tried to answer the questions accurately and did not complete all questions.
On the flipside I have sat traditional exams for qualifications where it is very clear how the papers will be marked. In that scenario where the marking scheme is transparent all candidates have a level playing field. For example if there is no penalty for incorrect answers then in a multiple choice exam I will always provide an answer for every question even if it is just arbitrarily selecting between plausible answers (if time is very short such that I don't have time to consider the question, all answers are considered plausible).

To be honest if there are only 4 possible answers (no multi-select etc) then even people with poor academic skills I would hope can do better than 5-20% of completed answers correct, although I suppose it depends how many red herring / 'trick' answers there are designed to exploit lack of ability (e.g. listing answers that can be arrived at by making an error such as 2+3*4 = 20). Essentially from what you have described the best strategy for such people should be to simply randomly answer each question giving 100% completion and 25% accuracy on average, given that by thinking about the question they are lowering their accuracy.

Edit: One thing I would be really interested to see would be exams whereby not only could you answer questions but also provide an assessment of how confident you are in the answer - not for assessment purposes, but for self-reflection. Essentially, as a means of measuring how good you are at assessing your own ability in the context of a problem. So for example you could rate an answer 5/5 for confidence meaning you are sure you know the right answer and then see if you ever get those questions wrong, and what type of question they are, and why you did not get the correct answer. It would then be quite interesting again to see how confidence correlates with exam score e.g. are there scenarios where people of a certain ability tend to over or under estimate their ability? And indeed look at the cross section by question - are certain questions or types of question 'harder' than they were appraised to in terms of the ratio of confidence to accuracy.

 

[12minprep]

While no one has posted here for a long time, I would like to add a few insights for other readers who stumble upon this great thread.

1. The average score on the Criteria Cognitive Aptitude test is 24/50. This can give you a good measure of how many questions you should strive to answer correctly if you wish to be counted as a top candidate. As you get closer to 30/50 and higher, you're in the top percentiles of the population (above 80% of general employees).
   
   
2. If you practice these questions under similar time constraints, you will see an improvement in your score. This is proven scientifically, it's not my own making.
3. The biggest problem, in my opinion, is the lack of an official Criteria Cognitive Aptitude test sample that can help candidates get a better idea of the test. Most cognitive ability test publishers already understood the importance of providing a friendly testing environment and looks like Criteria Corp have still not adjusted to 2018. They invite candidates to download an app from the iOS store which is called Job Flare, but it is not available on the Android/Google store (pure discrimination!) and moreover, it doesn't really provide relevant sample questions.
4. If you want to take a simulation test which is as close as possible to the real thing, I would recommend two resources:
   JobTestPrep (55-question quiz, slight UX issues, but still worth the practice)
   12minprep (30 question, 9-minute quiz with a friendly score report)
   
   
5. Lastly, not in relation to the topic, I am a bit disappointed that my gravatar image is that of Fredo Corleone... Can I ask for a different, more successful wise guy?

Hope this helps

 

[Mason-]

Do people really waste their time doing tests like these?

What IT job is this for? A Dev? Support ?

When I applied for grad jobs out of Uni (software), I think the majority of places I applied for made you do one, they were very similar to IQ tests.

 

[malachi]

I had to do one for an IT job a few years ago. Wasn't expecting it, obviously I never passed as I'm not good at things like that. Any jobs I applied for I avoided that company. They have now dropped tests apparently.

I don't see the point of them if you are apply for an IT job, NASA Rocket Scientist job then it would make sense.

 

[Yadda]

I've done one or two of these over the years.

The first thing you must do is practice. If you're not familiar with these types of problems then they are very tricky. Add a (deliberately) unreasonable time limit to that and you have a nightmare on your hands. So, practice, practice, practice.

Next, after practicing, learn to identify which types of problem you're comfortable with and which you're not so comfortable with. These tests are as much about your ability to organise and prioritise your efforts under pressure as they are about solving the actual problems. So, go through the questions and pick the low hanging fruit (problems you're comfortable with solving quickly) first, and leave the ones you find more difficult to the end.

Remember, you may not be expected to complete the entire task in the allotted time, so don't panic.