Why do employers use verbal reasoning tests? Put simply: because they are felt to be better at predicting job performance than interviews, CVs and personality questionnaires.

Most employers use an online form of the verbal reasoning test now. This works very well for the pre-selection stage, after the initial application form, before the assessment centre stage. Candidates are asked to login to an online testing environment, and sit an unsupervised test via a computer. For the employer, the online verbal reasoning assessment procedure saves time and cost as lots of candidates can quickly be assessed this way en masse. For the candidate it means you don’t have to travel, and it is hoped that you are more likely to feel relaxed and comfortable taking the test. It is perfectly possible for you to ‘train’ to become good at these tests.

If the employer likes your application and you score well in your online test they will may or may not invite you in for an interview and another test but this time supervised.   For online verbal reasoning tests, it’s even more important to practice, since this will allow you to become familiar with the test interface and test style. If you are familiar with the types of test you have to face, you are more likely to perform your best and maximise your chances of success. It is now considered too, apparently from a vast body of research, that one of the critical determinants of success is the extent to which you’re expecting to do well!

In many verbal reasoning tests, you are provided with a passage of information and required to evaluate a set of statements by selecting one of the following possible answers:

A – True (The statement follows logically from the information or opinions contained in the passage)

B – False (The statement is logically false from the information or opinions contained in the passage)

C – Cannot Say (Cannot determine whether the statement is true or false without further information)

This is exactly the same format as the SHL verbal reasoning test. SHL is one of the most likely test providers you will meet in the legal recruitment process.

Take, for example, this passage.

Over 60 years ago, evolutionary biologist Bernhard Rensch calculated that males are typically the larger sex in big-bodied species such as humans, whereas females outdo them in small-bodied species such as spiders. Now it turns out that many plants obey Rensch’s rule too. Most plants produce both male and female sex organs, but around 7 per cent are dioecious, meaning individuals are purely male or female. Recent results provide that female stems also must be large enough to display the fruit and support the animals that spread the pollen or seeds. If metabolism, predators or climate promote the evolution of smaller plants, however, males can shrink because their gametes are smaller.

The statement you’re asked to judge might be this:

Over 80 years ago, Bernard Rensch calculated that males are typically the larger sex in big-bodied species.

The answer is CANNOT SAY. The passage says that Bernard Rensch calculated this over 60 years ago, but it is not possible to say from the passage whether he calculated this over 80 ye;ars ago.

Verbal reasoning tests are designed to test your powers of comprehension and logic. You will be tested on whether you jump to conclusions or you appreciate the limitations of a statement. If a passage says “it has been reported…” it does not follow that the fact is necessarily true, only that it has been reported.  You can therefore see why lawyers almost always have to pass a verbal reasoning test.

Through practice, you will develop your own technique for answering verbal reasoning questions to the best of your ability, however for most people the best way to approach them is to read the entire passage through once, then turn to the questions. Read the first statement and refer back to the relevant part of the passage to carefully consider if the statement is true, false, or impossible to determine without further information. It will often come down to just one or two sentences within the passage.