Because large companies receive so many applications, it’s impossible for them to read through every resume carefully. Inductive reasoning tests are psychometric exams designed to screen interested job-seekers and graduates. Instead of spending thousands of dollars sorting through candidate files, many businesses have turned to aptitude assessments.
Having digitalised the hiring process, companies can spend less time searching for qualified candidates and more time and effort training them to become successful employees.
While these tests are designed to assess your abilities, you can and should still study for them. The questions on pre-employment assessments can be tricky, and if you’re not prepared, you might miss easy points. Just because you can’t necessarily boost your I.Q. overnight doesn’t mean you shouldn’t look over some practice inductive reasoning questions ahead of time.
Continue reading to learn more about inductive reasoning and how you can best prepare for your exam. When you’re done, make sure to click over to the questions tab to see some inductive reasoning examples with answers.
What Is Inductive Reasoning?
Inductive reasoning is the opposite of deductive reasoning. When we deduce something, we take a rule and apply it to a unique situation. That’s why we call deduction top-down logic—you move from the general to the particular. Induction, by contrast, is bottom-up logic. Instead of starting with a proven theory, you’re going to take a series of observations and develop an argument to explain them.
Inductive logical thinking allows us to make generalisations that allow us to better understand our surroundings. For example, let’s say you are travelling to a new country. When you arrive, you notice that the people you meet all eat with a spoon rather than a fork. It’s possible that you’ve simply encountered people with strange habits; however, you’ll probably assume that people in this country prefer to eat with spoons.
While inductive reasoning is relevant to every field, it’s particularly useful to IT professionals and developers who need to analyse large amounts of data with a high degree of accuracy. Because they require a similar skill set, inductive reasoning tests allow HR professionals to compare hundreds of candidates fairly.
Why Do I Need to Take an Inductive Reasoning Test?
Inductive reasoning is a basic form of logical processing. You’ve probably used inductive reasoning hundreds of times before without realising it even if you’ve never stepped foot in a philosophy classroom. We use inductive reasoning to make generalisations and develop theories based on phenomena we observe.
For example, if you were to tell a doctor that every time you eat cheese or ice cream you have a stomach ache, he might induce that you were sensitive to lactose. This would be a very well-reasoned diagnosis. Now, it’s possible that every morsel of cheese and mouthful of ice cream you’ve eaten have had food poisoning and that your stomach aches have nothing to do with food sensitivities. However, the former inference is far more likely.
Sometimes our inductive reasoning leads us astray. For example, let’s say I blow on a pair of dice while rolling them, and I roll doubles. I figure that blowing on the dice must have given me some luck, so I blow on them again and again roll doubles. I then assume that every time I blow on the dice, I’ll get a lucky roll. The truth is though, assuming the dice were fair, the event was merely a coincidence. While many conclusions drawn from inductive reasoning are highly probable, they are not necessarily factual.
If you have the logical reasoning skills to solve puzzles and recognise patterns, then chances are you’ll be able to interpret data and evaluate systems in the office as well. Though you’ll be grappling with far more practical issues at work, the abstract problems you’ll encounter on your inductive test will help your employers gauge your intelligence and raw talent in a way they wouldn’t be able to simply by staring at your CV.
How to Pass Inductive Reasoning Tests?
While you’ve probably never been asked to use inductive logical thinking specifically to solve a problem, there’s no doubt that you’ve had to make inferences and sweeping assumptions based on the information at hand. Inductive reasoning is, without a doubt, quite intuitive. That being said, the questions you’ll encounter on an aptitude assessment will be far from simple.
If you want to make sure you’ll pass your psychometric exam, you’ll want to prepare ahead of time. Many if not most of the questions on the test won’t deal with situations, but rather diagrams. You’ll be presented with either a sequence or a matrix and be asked to identify a pattern based on the symbols presented to you. Easy in theory but difficult in practice, these questions demand a quick eye and a great deal of concentration.
As is the case with most standardised tests, practice will greatly improve your chances of success. The strategies you’ll need to use on an inductive logical reasoning test our strategies you will, in most cases, need to learn and master. While the online exam is designed to test your intelligence, you won’t perform at your best if you’re completely caught off-guard.
Types of Inductive Reasoning Tests
- SHL
SHL’s online exam is one of the more popular inductive reasoning assessments. It contains a total of 18 questions and lasts 24 minutes. All of the questions are multiple-choice, and each one presents five possible answers.
- Saville
Peter Saville, the founder of SHL, also created Saville Consulting, which is now Saville Assessment. There are two versions of the Saville inductive reasoning test: a short, six-minute assessment and a long, 16-minute assessment, both of which contain shapes arranged in series and matrices.
- Kenexa
Kenexa psychometric tests are usually administered as a suite including a verbal, numerical, and logical reasoning section. On the logical component, you’ll be asked to identify the missing item in a series of figures.
- Cubiks
The Cubiks inductive reasoning test is known as the Logiks Abstract Test. It’s part of the Logiks General Assessment, which also contains a verbal and numerical component. Each section will last a total of 4 minutes, during which time you’ll have 24 verbal questions, 16 numerical questions, and 10 logic questions respectively. The advanced version of the test lasts a total of 20 minutes with fewer, more difficult questions in each section.
- Talent Q Elements
The Talent Q assessment contains only matrices. You’ll be given 75 seconds to complete each question, after which the program will automatically move you to the next problem. Since the test is adaptive, you’ll receive either harder or easier questions depending on your responses.
- Matrigma
The Matrigma test lasts a total of 40 minutes, nearly twice the length of most other tests, and the questions increase in difficulty as the test continues. As the name suggests, the questions are all based off of matrices, all of which are modelled off of Raven’s progressive matrices, which were originally developed in 1936 to measure fluid intelligence.
- Cut-e Discovering Rules Test
Known as one of the most difficult logic assessments, the Cut-e inductive reasoning test contains 20 questions, which need to be answered in only 5 minutes leaving you only about 15 seconds per question on average. With a set of highly unique questions, you’ll have to think outside the box if you’re going to succeed on this exam.
Tips for Inductive Reasoning Tests:
We’ve got the best inductive reasoning tips here for you, so when you head out to the assessment centre, you’ll be more than prepared. Make sure to use these tips when working on the inductive reasoning practice test on the next page.
- Watch for the Major Pattern & the Minor Pattern: We’ve already established that you’ll have to look for patterns on inductive reasoning tests. However, you’ll want to make sure that you look for the minor patterns as well as the major Usually, there will be at least two different sequences to track.
- Look Horizontally & Vertically: If you’re working with matrices, you have to remember that the missing piece in the puzzle will have to fit into the sequences both in the columns and in the rows.
- Try, Try Again: Many of the patterns on inductive reasoning tests are either hidden or very subtle. If you don’t notice the patterns right away, don’t panic. Note down what you do see and work from there. It may take a few tries before you find the correct sequence, and that’s normal.
Final Thoughts on Inductive Reasoning Tests:
Looking for more practice? Make sure to check out our inductive reasoning examples posted for you on the free practice tab.
