Interpersonal Skills Test

The interpersonal skills test assesses a candidate’s ability to effectively communicate, interact, and work with others.

  • What is an interpersonal skills test?

    An interpersonal skills test is a measure of an individual’s social intelligence, and the core competencies required to work effectively with others. It is designed to highlight candidates that possess strong social abilities, and assess how well they’re able to apply them in a professional context.

    The test-taker is presented with a range of hypothetical work-based scenarios, and must exercise their best judgement to determine the most and least effective ways to respond. Communication, empathy, conflict resolution, and emotional awareness are all strengths covered in an interpersonal skills test.

    Those that achieve a high score are likelier to have the capacity to maintain healthy working relationships, handle challenging situations with diplomacy, and integrate well in a professional environment.

Jump to a section on this page:

  1. What is an interpersonal skills test?
  2. Why should you use an interpersonal skills test for recruiting?
  3. How our test assesses interpersonal skills
  4. Interpersonal Skills Test FAQs

About the Interpersonal Skills Test

Strong interpersonal skills, or people skills, are essential in almost every line of work. If an employee is unable to engage with others effectively, it can significantly impact their performance, and may even cause discord in the workplace.

It’s therefore highly beneficial to test applicants on their people skills as part of the recruitment process. As well as helping to inform selection, an interpersonal skills test can be used to assess the strengths of your current workforce, and identify areas for improvement.

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  • Why should you use an interpersonal skills test for recruiting?

    There are few roles that can be executed successfully without a level of interpersonal ability. However, customer-facing roles, such as sales, hospitality and business development, are obvious areas where people skills are a must-have.

    An individual's interpersonal skills determine their ability to collaborate, express ideas, and take on board constructive feedback. They dictate how well they respond to instruction, support their colleagues, and contribute to a positive atmosphere.

    When a business focuses on interpersonal skills, they achieve greater productivity and growth, and a more positive working environment - yet they are often overlooked in recruitment.

    This is primarily due to the fact that they are so hard to measure. A candidate may list core competencies on their resume, and give examples at interviews, but it’s hard to tell the extent to which these skills actually prove themselves in practice.

    With an interpersonal skills test, you can do just that. By issuing the test in the screening stage of recruitment, you can quickly identify applicants that demonstrate interpersonal skills to a high degree, and those that don’t. The strongest candidates can then be shortlisted for an interview or further assessment.

    Whatever your line of business, and whatever role you’re hiring for, it makes for an efficient and effective process, and ensures you recruit from the best possible pool of talent.

More Soft Skills Tests

Sample Interpersonal Skills Test question

You are the head of a customer service department within a large company. Some of your team members are overdue for an annual company training program. However, you recently found out that they have been passed over and the training program manager selected people from the finance department instead.

You think this might have to do with the fact that the training program manager does not know you as well as he knows the finance head.

What would you do?

  • Contact the head of the finance department and ask her to let your team members join the training instead of hers.

  • Ignore the issue as there will be another program again soon and prioritizing employee training is the program manager's job, not yours.

  • Email the training program manager expressing your frustration with being passed over and include your supervisor in the email.

  • Reach out to the training program manager and inquire as to why your team members haven't been able to receive training.

Picked Sample Report

View a sample report

Results for the Interpersonal 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.

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How our test assesses interpersonal skills

In Picked's interpersonal skills test, candidates will need to answer a range of situational judgement questions designed to indicate how well they can interact, communicate, and work with others 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 interpersonal skills 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 their true level of interpersonal skills and feels the test is high quality.

Our interpersonal skills 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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    Fully accredited

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

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    For all levels

    We offer Interpersonal 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
Interpersonal Skills Test expert

Written by an Interpersonal 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

Interpersonal Skills Test FAQs

What are good interpersonal skills?

The skills that contribute to interpersonal ability are many, and range from active listening to self-awareness. Effective communication is of course top among the list, and as such plays a key role in Picked’s interpersonal skills test.

What is the importance of interpersonal skills in the workplace?

Any working environment is essentially a product of the interpersonal skills held by the employees within it. When these skills are advanced, it leads to more efficient practices, increased productivity and overall, a stronger team working together to achieve business goals.

What is the cost for Picked’s interpersonal skills test?

Picked operates on a monthly or annual subscription basis. We have several plans to suit your hiring needs, which you can check out here. Alternatively, you can get in touch with us to discuss a custom plan.

Can I get a free trial?

Yes, sign up (no credit card required) and we'll give you a 7 day trial completely free. You'll get unlimited access to create as many jobs and test as many candidates as you like. You can cancel any time and you won't be charged anything.

“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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