Test day

Test day: what to have ready before you open the invitation

Applicants report that the invitation to the online assessment arrives by email within days of applying, and one placement applicant was given four days to complete it. That leaves little time to get ready once it lands, so prepare before you apply. What follows combines what applicants reported with what we learned sitting an interactive SHL assessment for another employer. It is candidate experience rather than official guidance.

Last updated 30 September 2026 · with applicants' reports from the 2025 and 2026 cycles

Have these on the desk before you start

• A calculator, pen and paper. A placement applicant's invitation listed all three. A calculator with real buttons is quicker under pressure than a phone screen.
• More paper than you think you need. You will be writing constantly.
• Three or four highlighter colours. Applicants single out the calendar and timetable questions as the hardest to finish in time. They become far easier when each person or rule has its own colour. This was the single most useful thing on our desk.
• Pre-drawn grids. For schedule, bar-chart and calendar questions we kept drawing the same grids over and over. Draw them once in advance, print several copies, and fill them in. Print the grids we used.
• A mouse, if you have one. Dragging a point to an exact value on a touchpad costs time you do not have.
• A quiet hour with nothing else open. SHL describes its interactive general ability test as a single sitting, so plan to finish it in one go, with notifications off.

Do it yourself

AstraZeneca's guidance for candidates treats using AI to prepare as responsible use, and lists generating answers in real time during an assessment as misuse. Practising beforehand is the fair way to get faster.

What the clock does to you

Our full-length tests give you 24 questions in 36 minutes, which is ninety seconds each. Those are the figures SHL publishes for SHL Verify Interactive G+, its interactive general ability test. The pressure is real: one applicant in the 2025 cycle only had time for about two thirds of the questions. Two things follow.

• Do not get stuck. An applicant reported that you cannot return to a question once you move on, so there is nothing to gain from leaving one half done. If a question feels wrong after a minute, commit to your best answer and move on. SHL describes the test as adaptive, which means a harder question can be a sign that the earlier ones went well.
• Use the practice questions. SHL allows about ten minutes for instructions and practice before the timed part. Use them to settle your hands, your calculator and your grids.

The week before: the preparation that moves the score

Two phases, in this order. The second matters far more than the first.

1. Learn each question type, once. Work through examples until dragging a line to a value, resizing bars, ranking people from clues and completing a pattern each feel mechanical. This takes an evening.
2. Then only practise against the clock. Full length, timed, forward-only, on an interactive interface. Untimed multiple-choice practice trains a habit that an interactive test never asks for. This is what this site is for, and the first full test is free.

Keep the result in proportion

In the 2025 cycle, applicants with top grades were rejected and an applicant with three C grades was invited to the assessment centre. The online assessment is one part of the decision. Give it proper preparation, then put the same care into the rest of your application.

Guides

• The AstraZeneca situational judgement test: why we sell no practice for it
• Is the AstraZeneca SHL test interactive? What applicants describe

What applicants report about the assessment

Unofficial, and written from candidate experience. Your invitation and the instructions on the day take precedence over anything here. AstraZeneca SHL Prep is not affiliated with AstraZeneca PLC, any company in the AstraZeneca group, or SHL Group.