Saville Assessment, which was formerly Saville Consulting, provides psychometric exams to businesses in over 80 countries around the world. These tests are designed to help companies identify top talent and hire employees that best fit the company culture.
Below, job seekers can find everything they need to know about passing these pre-employment assessments. Whether you’ve never heard of psychometric tests in your entire life or if you just need a cursory overview, we have the information you need here.
What Is a Saville Test?
There are a number of Saville assessments that you may be asked to take when applying for a new position. Principally, these will fall under four main categories: verbal comprehension, numerical reasoning, logic, and personality.
If your application is approved, you’ll be sent a link that will take you to a timed, online exam. All of the questions are multiple choice, and you’ll receive your score automatically upon submitting your final answers. Some companies also choose to have you re-take the exam in an assessment centre afterwards to verify your scores.
The difficulty level depends on the test. While some are intended for administrative and operational staff, others are designed for managers and executives. Still others were written to test the technical knowledge of engineers and other similar professionals.
How to Prepare for the Saville Assessment?
You should prepare for the exam using Saville assessment practice tests. Saville tests are not extraordinarily difficult; however, the format of the test and the structure of the questions might confuse you if you haven’t seen them before. It’s important that you practice using questions that are as similar as possible to the original questions so that you’ll be ready to go on test day.
Once you complete the Saville assessment practice, make sure that you review your answers carefully. It’s important that you understand why you got a question wrong and what you should do next time so that you don’t make the same mistake.
This is also the time where you can improve your speed. All psychometric exams are timed, including Saville assessment tests. After you’ve taken a practice exam, go through all of the questions, including the ones you answered correctly, to see if you can find a quicker way to answer the question. Time is, indeed, your greatest obstacle. The faster you can go, the more likely you are to finish the exam in time.
The Saville Assessments:
There are a number of Saville assessments. Here we gloss over the most common ones for you.
Saville Wave Assessment
According to modern psychologists, personality is the one of the most important determining factors for professional success second only to raw intelligence. Personality dictates how well you cooperate with co-workers and supervisors as well as how you advance in your field. It also determines how careful and diligent you are, how quickly you come up with new ideas, and even how well you’ll follow standard company practices.
Most people assume that a personality test is nothing more than a friendly questionnaire. However, those people would be wrong. The Saville Wave Assessment is just as much an assessment as any of their other psychometric exams. Your results will show what qualities you possess. The computer will compare your results to the results from a control group, whose participants all work in your field. If your results don’t meet an acceptable standard, you won’t move on to the interview round.
On the Saville Wave Assessment, you’ll be presented with a series of statements and asked to rate each based on the degree to which you agree with it between strongly disagree and strongly agree. If you’ve marked any questions with the same response, you’ll have to compare them to each other once you’ve finished answering all of the initial questions.
Saville Executive Aptitude Test
The Saville Executive Aptitude Test is designed for anyone applying for a role as an upper-level manager or executive. Executives need to be able to fully comprehend written documents, communicate effectively, and grasp abstract ideas. This test serves as an objective means by which to measure these skills.
While a resume might show a hiring manager what an applicant has done, it tells him little about the employee’s raw abilities. A clever career counsellor can craft engaging cover letters and beautiful resumes. However, these documents may prove deceptive. The same is true for someone who, for example, comes from a different country and doesn’t speak the language fluently. The Saville Executive Aptitude Test levels the playing field allowing every candidate an equal opportunity to proceed to the interview process.
The test is divided into three separate sections, each of which has questions that are highly relevant to the business world. The first section is verbal. On the verbal test, you’ll be asked to read a short passage and answer comprehension screening questions about it. Then, you’ll proceed to the numerical section, in which you’ll have to read and analyze tables and charts with sales figures and revenue reports. Lastly, you’ll complete the logic section. On this last part, you’ll need to identify abstract patterns and choose the figure that correctly completes the sequence.
Saville Swift Analysis Aptitude
The Saville Executive Analysis Aptitude Test differs only slightly from the Saville Analysis Aptitude Test. They are the same difficulty level and have the same format. However, they do have a number of differences.
The Swift Analysis Aptitude Test can only be given over the internet while the Executive Aptitude Test may be given either online or in person at a supervised assessment centre. The test is also shorter. The Swift Analysis Aptitude Test lasts 18 minutes while its counterpart goes on for 72 minutes. The time for each of the test is divided evenly into the three sections. That allows for 6 minutes to answer the 8 questions on each section of the Swift assessment and 24 minutes to answer the 32 questions on each section of the Executive assessment.
Lastly, the final sections on the two tests are slightly different. On the Executive Analysis Aptitude tests, you’ll be given a sequence of abstract shapes and asked to choose the figure that completes the pattern. On the Swift Analysis Aptitude Test though you’ll be given a full diagram. This diagram will contain a set of arrows connecting different inputs and outputs, and you’ll have to determine and then apply the rules that govern the apparatus.
Saville Diagrammatic Reasoning Test
The last of the Saville assessments we’ll be discussing here is the Saville Diagrammatic Reasoning Test. The Saville Diagrammatic Reasoning Test, which is very different from the Saville Diagrammatic Analysis Test, involves a set of inputs and outputs governed by various rules. As mentioned above, your job is to determine the nature of these rules and apply them to other inputs.
Tips for Acing the Saville Aptitude Test
Still nervous about your Saville assessments? Look over these helpful tips before heading out to the assessment centre and you’ll be ready to go!
Double Bubble: You’ve probably heard the old saying that you measure twice and cut once. Well, the same holds true here except you’ll need to think once, but double twice. That is to say that you should always check your answer before proceeding. A hasty click could lose you a valuable point.
Answer Once: On standardized paper exams it’s easy to flip back and forth between pages to return to difficult questions. That’s not true online though. It takes longer than you think to load the new question, and you’ll need every second you can get.
Keep Paper on Hand: If you’re under a time limit, it will be easy to make careless mistakes. Make sure you keep some scrap paper on hand for calculations and diagrams. After all, you won’t be able to write anything down in the margins of your computer screen.
Plan Your Time Wisely:
Companies That Use Saville Assessment
These are some of the many companies that use Saville tests:
Psychometric testing can be daunting at best and dreadful at worst, especially if you have to do it for multiple positions. That being said, you can set yourself up for success with practice. Plus, Saville tests can actually provide you with an incredible opportunity. This is your chance to prove your abilities, distinguish yourself from the competition, and attract the attention of the hiring manager.
Practice will help you to improve your chances to ace the psychometric tests.
Read the following passage and answer the question below.
Tippie joins a growing list of U.S. business schools shutting down their flagship M.B.A. programs in favor of shorter, specialized masters and online degrees.
Applications to traditional M.B.A. programs have languished in a strong U.S. job market, declining last year even at Harvard Business School, Stanford University’s Graduate School of Business and other elite schools. Administrators say millennials, saddled with more college debt than previous generations, have grown more reluctant to leave jobs for a year or more to pursue one of the nation’s priciest degrees.
Jade Manternach, who graduated last month with her M.B.A. from the Tippie school in Iowa, said she understood the financial challenges schools are facing yet felt an online degree wouldn’t have provided all the same benefits to students, like her, who are hoping to switch careers.
“The real value of the M.B.A. is not what you learn, it’s who you meet and how you’re challenged by the experience, and the confidence it brings to rise to those challenges,” the 26-year-old aspiring entrepreneur said.
Why might traditional M.B.A.’s actually win out over online programs?
The cost
The convenience
The subject matter
The opportunities for networking
The economy is the main reason students are opting for more affordable programs.
True
False
Cannot Say
Answer the question below based on the data in the chart.How many more jobs will there be in 2026 for environmental engineer technicians according to the predictions given?