Situational judgement
How best/worst scenarios work, what partial credit means, and how to read a middling score.
What the framework is
A situational judgement test (SJT) presents realistic workplace dilemmas and asks what the candidate would do. It measures judgement in context — prioritisation, escalation, handling conflict, dealing with an unhappy customer or an overloaded colleague — rather than ability or personality.
SJTs work because the scenarios are recognisable. A candidate with real experience of the situation tends to pick differently from one reasoning about it from the outside.
How the questions are built
Each scenario offers four plausible responses. None is absurd; that is deliberate. The scoring key marks one response as the most effective and one as the least effective, based on what an experienced practitioner would do.
Because several responses are defensible, scoring is partial credit rather than right or wrong: choosing the best response earns full credit, an intermediate response earns none but costs nothing, and choosing the response marked worst is the meaningful negative signal.
How to interpret a result
Expect mid-range scores. A result around 50–70% is normal and healthy, and does not mean poor judgement — it means the candidate picked defensible middle options.
The interesting signal is at the extremes. Repeatedly choosing the least effective response points to a real gap in judgement; consistently choosing the most effective one suggests genuine experience with situations like these.
Read the individual answers, not just the total. Someone who handles customer scenarios well but escalates poorly has a specific, coachable pattern — invisible in a single percentage.
Remember it measures stated judgement, not behaviour under real pressure. Use the answers as material for the interview: 'you chose this — talk me through why.'
Common mistakes
Reading an SJT score like an exam mark and worrying about anything under 80%.
Assuming the scoring key is objective truth. It reflects a considered professional view; a candidate may argue for a different choice, and a good argument is itself a positive signal.
Using generic scenarios for a specialised role. Tailoring scenarios to the actual job makes the results far more useful.
Treating a low score as a character judgement rather than a prompt for a conversation.