aptitude/psychometric tests

Soldato
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1 Jul 2007
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I've been lucky/successful enough to make it through to the next stage of an application for an apprenticeship; CAD in a mechanical engineering company.

Anybody had any experience of doing the above? Some googling reveals that there may be questions asked problems, graphs, formulae etc asked. Anybody got a link to some revision sights? Admittedly I am a bit rusty. I could email my tech teacher from school but not sure how quick he'd get in contact, and ask him for revision sheets or notes.


Any advice, tips, stories of ones you've done yourself?


Tah.
 
Tea Drinker
Don
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Done loads especially DISC assessments, obviously the aptitude tests.you can brush up on basic maths and English but the psychometric tests just do as quick as you can honestly don't try and fool them.
 
Soldato
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bah, psychometric mumbojumbo, load of old toss if you ask me. Maybe if you're an astronaut on a 3 year trip to mars... they might want to have some inkling if you're going to murder your crew mates on route. But for ordinary jobs I think it's a waste of time.

As for the rest, brush up on your basic literacy and numeracy etc.

Don't sweat it, these things are just so much employer BS. You sometimes get it a lot with agencies, but in your case I suppose they want to be sure about taking on an apprentice; that they have the right guy for the job. It's as much about your actual ability as it is your desire to learn and succeed - if you're enthusiastic about the job, most employers would choose someone who's motivated over another who ticks the 'test' boxes but is indifferent.
Do you know if you're up against anyone else for the position?
 
Soldato
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I guess I would be. There was a very big and busy open evening and when I was in the "info" room the CAD desk was the busiest.

Any websites to use to brush up on, of just google it myself and find ones I like?
 
Soldato
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Don't sweat it, these things are just so much employer BS. You sometimes get it a lot with agencies, but in your case I suppose they want to be sure about taking on an apprentice; that they have the right guy for the job. It's as much about your actual ability as it is your desire to learn and succeed - if you're enthusiastic about the job, most employers would choose someone who's motivated over another who ticks the 'test' boxes but is indifferent.
Do you know if you're up against anyone else for the position?

Umm, I would be careful about this advice, I know my firm and my OH's (who incidently runs the HR recruitment side of things) company use psychometric test as an initial test. Fail it and you don't even get to an interview to impress.

Obviously I don't know which the OPs will be but don't assume it's BS. It may not be.
 
Soldato
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The difference between an aptitude/literacy/numeracy test and an arbitrary psychometric 'test' is you can practise for the aptitude side of things - ie basic maths and english, logic, spatial, abstract and engineering reasoning etc.
The psychometric personality stuff is pretty much random 'do you want to kill your co-workers when under stress?' nonsense.
eg.
Q - "I like being the centre of attention"
A - strong no - no - neutral - yes - strong yes

I know HR departments think they're great. My own personal view is that they are a waste of time, primarily designed to try and filter large pools of candidates without the need to actually bother to conduct a proper one to one interview.

That's why I say don't sweat it - you cannot 'prepare' for BS like that, just hope you don't answer all the questions and end up being labelled as a lazy, sociopathic-attention-whoring-monster, unlikely to fit in in group and social organisations. :p
 
Soldato
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It's aptitude I'd like to practice on.

I've done the personallity side before, a couple of times for B&Q and somewhere else. B&Q came back and basically said (between the lines) I was too unique and individual and they thought I wouldn't conform to their drone like employees.
 
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