Leadership Test

Leadership tests assess an individual's ability to guide others in an inspiring and professional way. Selecting the right leaders is really important if you want to build a sustainable and profitable business.

  • What is a leadership test?

    Leadership tests are designed to probe whether an individual has the skills and strengths typically needed to be a strong leader.

    To perform well in a leadership test, a candidate needs to demonstrate abilities in delegation, prioritisation, providing meaningful feedback, supporting the development of more junior members of staff, having difficult conversations and managing large volumes of ideas and plans.

    Other areas of interest may include time management, alignment to the company vision and producing tangible results.

    Leadership can be assessed in a number of ways, but situational judgement tests are a useful approach since they reveal how effectively a candidate would handle situations that leaders often encounter on the job.

    This test is becoming increasingly used in the recruitment of senior members of staff, since employers recognise the importance of strong leadership, both from an economic and team morale perspective.

Jump to a section on this page:

  1. What is a leadership test?
  2. Why should you use a leadership test for recruiting?
  3. How our test assesses leadership skills
  4. Leadership Test FAQs

About the Leadership Test

Leadership tests are becoming an essential part of the hiring process for managers because leadership is about so much more than how well someone does their job. Strong leaders need to be able to strategise, inspire, motivate and lead by example.

As well as helping recruiters and employers to find new talent, the leadership test can also be used to identify gaps in people's experience or skills. They can even be used as a means of progressing or up-skilling current employees who are looking to move into leadership positions.

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  • Why should you use a leadership test for recruiting?

    Often, candidates applying for management positions have similar qualifications and levels of experience. By introducing a leadership test, recruiters can get a fairer, more objective perspective, and then evaluate whether an individual has the necessary strengths to be a good leader.

    Those hired to leadership positions often need to hit the ground running, and quickly become immersed in strategy, people management and driving the business forward. A leadership test can be a good indicator of the type of person who copes well under pressure and is able to make strong and sensible decisions.

    The leadership test would be suitable in the hiring of a wide range of job roles, including:

    • Senior and junior management positions
    • Roles where coaching and supporting others is critical
    • Mentoring roles
    • Roles where you're priming people for a management position
    • CEOs, CIOs and CFOs

    Hiring into a leadership position without a test means you won't necessarily be able to quantify the skills and strengths of your applicants, and you could even end up hiring the wrong person, with serious financial implications.

More Soft Skills Tests

Sample Leadership Test question

One of your team, Roland, approaches you and explains that he feels like he has too much work on at the moment. You know that he has been having some personal problems, but you don't think his workload is greater than the rest of the team.

However, Roland explains that he has missed a few client deadlines recently and is worried about the projects he is involved in this month. You have noticed that he hasn't been his usual energetic self recently.

What would you do?

  • Check in with other team members to see if anyone has time to help out with some of Roland's tasks until he seems to be himself again.

  • Thank Roland for sharing his concerns with you and ask him whether there is anything he wants to talk through and what support he needs from you.

  • Imply that you've heard he's having some personal problems so that he feels he can discuss them with you and then offer your support.

  • Empathize with Roland, sharing that you also feel stressed at times and express your confidence in him to get the job done.

Picked Sample Report

View a sample report

Results for the Leadership 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 leadership skills

In Picked's leadership test, candidates will need to answer a range of situational judgment questions that challenge a candidate’s competency in leadership. The test is designed to indicate how well can a candidate make leadership-level decisions, 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 analyzed to maximize reliability and validity in line with industry best practices. It was created and tested by psychometric experts, and designed to assess leadership 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 candidate has a fair chance of demonstrating their true level of expertise.

Our leadership 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 Leadership tests are written by accredited psychologists and fully validated.

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    For all levels

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

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    Our full array of candidate performance metrics will provide actionable data on each of your candidates.

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    Candidate comparison

    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
Leadership Test expert

Written by a Leadership 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

Leadership Test FAQs

What are the key skills for someone with leadership qualities?

It takes many different skills to make a good leader, but the most important include: an ability to motivate and inspire people; leading by example; astute decision-making; an ability to strategise; and effective delegation.

What's the difference between leadership and management?

Management is more focused on achieving a goal, whereas leadership encompasses a broader remit of skills including: motivating and influencing others; strategising; and bringing people together to work towards a business goal or objective.

What is the cost for Picked's leadership 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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