Adaptability Skills Test

Adaptability is an important soft skill to test for when you are looking for a new employee, especially in a fast-paced business such as a startup or a tech firm.

  • What is an adaptability test?

    An adaptability test assesses a candidate on their ability to work under pressure, find new ways of getting work done, and adapt to changing situations.

    Adaptability is a key soft skill in many employment scenarios, where adapting quickly to change can ensure the success of a business in an industry where innovation has to be part of a strategy.

    Adaptable candidates are flexible and versatile: they are able to deal with uncertainty and ambiguity in instructions, and they are highly tolerant of fast-changing circumstances. Adaptable people embrace a challenge and often work well with others, motivating and keeping the peace in group settings while ensuring that a project can move forward.

    Using an adaptability test means that each potential employee is assessed on how well they would suit working in a fast-paced environment.

Jump to a section on this page:

  1. What is an adaptability test?
  2. Why should you use an adaptability test for recruitment?
  3. How our test assesses adaptability skills
  4. Adaptability Skills Test FAQs

About the Adaptability Skills Test

Adaptability is usually assessed as part of a personality assessment, as it is a trait that informs work behaviour. However, it can and should be tested separately, especially for roles in industries where innovation, disruption and change are common, such as technology, software, and even customer service.

The test is based on unexpected but realistic workplace scenarios that call on employees to behave flexibly while still exhibiting strong performance.

In situations where employees have limited control or are impacted by uncertainty, such as changes to role responsibilities, downsizing, absent team members, urgent last-minute tasks, and more, employers need to be able to rely on their people to still get the work done.

This test is meant to illustrate how candidates will behave in these situations.

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  • Why should you use an adaptability test for recruitment?

    Soft skills like adaptability, communication, and leadership are not easy to assess in more traditional ways. You cannot tell how adaptable someone is from their application form or CV, and it is not always easy to assess adaptability, even in an interview.

    Using an adaptability test to assess each candidate will give the recruitment team quantifiable, unbiased data to use when selecting candidates to move through the application process.

    The adaptability test can be administered to a large number of candidates to efficiently narrow the applicant pool, and the easy-to-read results provide data that will reduce the cost of hiring in terms of both time and money.

    The adaptability test can be used to test candidates for a number of roles in different industries, including:

    Recruiters can use the data from the assessments to choose only the most qualified candidates to take through to interview, with research-backed results that demonstrate that the chosen applicants are more likely to be successful in the role because they have the right level of adaptability.

    For the recruitment team, asking all applicants to take the same test removes bias, giving each candidate the same starting point from which to demonstrate how adaptable they are, and how suitable that makes them for the advertised role.

More Soft Skills Tests

Sample Adaptability Skills Test question

This summer you have been tasked with coordinating a company-wide team-building day and you have been working on it for the last two months. You've had several discussions with employees from different departments and seniority levels of the company, and have developed an agenda that incorporates everyone's needs and ideas. Given that the event is planned for a usually hot month, most of your activities include being outdoors and taking advantage of the open-air location. A few days before the event, you check the weather forecast and realize there might be a storm.

What do you do?

  • Ask your manager what has been done in the past in similar situations and act accordingly.

  • Check the forecast a few times a day and wait until the night before the event to decide what to do, then inform everyone.

  • Immediately call the venue to ask if you could move the event inside and revise the scheduled activities to account for the potential change in plans.

  • Go to the senior colleague who was responsible for last year's team-building event for advice.

Picked Sample Report

View a sample report

Results for the Adaptability Skills Test along with other assessments the candidate takes will be compiled to produce a candidate report. The report is automatically generated and available both online and as a downloadable pdf so they can be shared with other team members and employees alike.

Download sample report

How our test assesses adaptability skills

In Picked's adaptability test, candidates will need to answer a range of situational judgement questions that are designed to indicate how well a candidate can adjust to different situations and shift their priorities to meet the demands of their role based on a final test score, which can then be compared to the scores of other applicants.

The test presents a scenario for the candidates to review before selecting what they believe to be the most and least effective actions to take in response. The other available options are mostly generic mistakes or misconceptions, which makes the test challenging and helps measure a candidate's ability more accurately.

During the development process, the test was rigorously analysed to maximise reliability and validity in line with industry best practices. It was created and tested by psychometric experts, and designed to assess adaptability in a sample of job applicants who have varying professional experience.

Each test is reviewed by a panel of individuals representing diverse backgrounds to check for any sensitivity, fairness, face validity and accessibility issues. This ensures each test-taker has a fair chance of demonstrating the true level of their adaptability skills and feels the test is high quality.

Our adaptability test is monitored to ensure it is up-to-date and optimised for performance.

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Validated

Predictor of job success

Picked provides evidence-based recommendations for tests to use for over 750 jobs. Our recommendation engine leverages data from the Occupational Information Network (O*NET) developed by the U.S. Department of Labor, Employment and Training Administration (USDOL/ETA).

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    All our Adaptability Skills tests are written by accredited psychologists and fully validated.

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    For all levels

    We offer Adaptability Skills tests for all levels so you can assess all roles within your organisation.

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    Simple, easy-to-use candidate comparison reports mean you don’t need to be a psychologist to interpret them.

“We used Picked as part of our Finance Graduate Scheme recruitment and it was just what we needed – really simple to send candidates the link to complete and clear to see how they all compared. And great value for money!”
Christina, HR Director, Cancer Research, UK
Christina, HR Director, Cancer Research, UK
Adaptability Skills Test expert

Written by an Adaptability Skills Test expert

Our team of assessment experts is made up of I/O psychologists and psychometricians who are dedicated to making all of our tests as reliable, valid and fair as possible. They strictly adhere to best practices in the industry and stay on top of the latest innovations to ensure job candidates’ unique profiles of characteristics, abilities and knowledge are being measured accurately while minimising bias. They leverage decades of research and advanced predictive analytics to build assessments that link to outcomes that matter, such as job performance, turnover, engagement, culture fit and more.

“Personality profiling allowed us to perform lookalike modelling of our most successful employees and use this as a blueprint for new hires.”
Nick, HR Operations, Airbus, Spain
Nick, HR Operations, Airbus, Spain

Adaptability Skills Test FAQs

How do you measure adaptability?

Adaptability can be measured with questions in the situational judgement format, focusing on scenarios where adapting to change or dealing with uncertainty is part of the problem.

Recruiters can also measure adaptability through specific questions in the interview section of the application process.

What is adaptability testing?

Adaptability testing is a simple way to measure candidates on their ability to adapt to a fast-paced, changing, and updating workplace. It assesses them on their ability to be versatile and flexible, getting the work done with limited instructions and persistence in trying new things with the resilience to bounce back and try again.

Can I try the test for free?

Yes. Simply sign up (no credit card is required) and we'll give you unlimited access for seven days. Create as many jobs and test as many candidates as you want; you won't be charged a penny.

What is the cost for Picked's adaptability test?

Picked offers monthly or annual subscriptions for businesses of all sizes, so choose one that best fits your needs. You can also contact us to discuss the possibility of a custom plan suited to your specific needs. You can check out our subscription plans here.

“Focusing on data reduced the subjective decision making from our hiring process and allowed us to reduce bias and make better hiring decisions.”
Izzie, Head of HR, iZettle, Sweden
Izzie, Head of HR, iZettle, Sweden

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