CCAT - Any experience?

MouthBoy

MouthBoy

MouthBoy

Soldato
Joined
6 Apr 2010
Posts
2,906
Location
Cambridgeshire
Hi All,

I have just had a really good phone interview for a role I applied for, and I have been asked to do a CCAT before the next round. The interviewer explained roughly what this is as I had never heard of this before and said it was a way to ensure their candidates are suitable to continue.

Now, the issue is, I really do not test well. Never have.

In college and university I specifically did courses with little to no sit down tests and were all based on coursework or projects, which is what I am really good at. The role is for an implementation specialist, of which I have done for over 12 years and my CV expresses this very well. The interviewer had an problem with my history, but this is a test all candidates need to do.

Anyone got experience of this, whether being the candidate or recruiter?
 
I've done a critical thinking test which I guess is similar prior to joining a previous employer. It wasn't a pass/fail outcome you just ended up with a percentile. To me I viewed this as a good thing and boosted my confidence as it would give me an opportunity to empirically demonstrate my prowess, but I appreciate if you don't test well it could be a bit nerve-wracking.
When I was later hiring my own people, my experience was that everyone who scored highly and I subsequently employed was a good hire. The converse isn't necessarily true however i.e. you might have effective employees who didn't score highly.

My advice would be try to find out what the test is and if there are practice papers available, assuming you went through an agency they can probably advise. Understanding the style of the questions is important, I think some people flunk these by not giving enough attention to detail on the exact wordings.
 
Last edited:
Thanks for the advice.

It is direct with the company, and there are practice tests I can do beforehand.

Interestingly, out of the 50 questions, they require 30 to be right - so for them it is a pass/fail. UK average is 24 correct in the 15 minutes.

I can understand why they are doing this, but never done it before so like you say - nerve-wracking!
 
50 questions in 15mins is quite a pace, 18s per question. My main worry in this scenario would be running out of time (a common issue for me in exams at school/uni). I'm guessing they can't be that detailed, and 60% pass mark is pretty low.
My advice would be don't get bogged down on any one question, if you don't understand how to answer it straight away just move on and come back to it. Assuming it is multiple choice, make sure you guess any questions left at the end as there's presumably a 25% chance of getting it right assuming 4 answers.
Look at it this way, even if you only know half the answers that gets you 25 marks, then from the remaining 25 questions you just need another 5 correct, if it's multiple choice then you should on average get more than that just randomly answering them.
 
Last edited:
50 questions in 15 minutes is tough yes. The time pressure is on purpose.
Reading around, it seems that it is "if you do not know, guess" as an attitude.
Some questions are pick one of 4 answers, but other questions may have 6 or even 8 possible answers.
I am unsure if you can "go back" to questions skipped as I think you need to answer > submit > answer > submit. Unsure on this though.
 
Most sensible online tests I've done allow navigation between questions/pages. At a minimum I'd expect changing answers to be possible even if you can't skip them.

The best ones even allow you to flag questions for revisit so you don't have to manually find them amongst all those you knew the answer to, iirc some of the Microsoft exams support this.
 
Thanks for the advice.

I am going to do this tonight and see how it goes. I am going to run the mock papers first, and then just go for it. Wife will be on daughter and distraction duty so I can completely focus.
 
For anyone wondering - it was really hard!

I managed to get all 50 questions done, but there were a fair few guesses. I was told I did well but I do not know my actual score.

Never again please.
 
I did it, it's a pile of ******** tbh.

You really need to practise the type of questions it asks. Once you know the pattern it's easy, I did pass the cutoff but then heard nothing back anyway.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top Bottom