They come early, and they are not a formality.

Online pre-screening tests are now a standard part of the application process at several major UN agencies. They come early in the selection process, often before any human reviewer has seen your full profile, and they carry real weight in shortlisting decisions. The invitation usually calls it ‘a brief online exercise’: treat it as seriously as the interview.

Many candidates arrive at one with no preparation, because they did not know it was coming. Not every vacancy at these agencies includes a test. They are common enough, and consequential enough, that every applicant should know what they look like before one arrives.

Photograph: itupictures from Geneva, Switzerland, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons, modified

The lesson in outline

UN online pre-screening tests: aptitude, psychometrics and what to expect

Each step’s heading and the paragraph that opens it. I built the lesson to be worked through step by step, so it is above: interactive, and it ends in something you write for your own application.

They come early, and they are not a formality.
Online pre-screening tests are now a standard part of the application process at several major UN agencies. They come early in the selection process, often before any human reviewer has seen your full profile, and they carry real weight in shortlisting decisions. The invitation usually calls it ‘a brief online exercise’: treat it as seriously as the interview.
Four entities, three types, and the job opening settles which you face.
UNDP, UNICEF and WHO use online pre-screening tests, and the UN Secretariat uses them selectively, for specific job families and vacancy types. Not every vacancy at these agencies includes one. Of the three types, the cognitive test is timed and rewards practice; the personality assessment is untimed and is not to be gamed; the situational judgement test is scored against the framework the job opening lists.
Designed to be hard to finish, a second at a time.
Cognitive and aptitude tests are timed, typically fifteen to thirty minutes for thirty to fifty questions, and designed to be difficult to complete in the time allowed. That range gives a single question between eighteen seconds and a minute. Speed and accuracy both count.
Which organisation, and at what level.
Every check after this one compares against what you type here. It is asked rather than guessed, for the same reason the rest of this lesson tells you to go and look rather than assume: an assessment is part of your process or it is not, and only the job opening and the portal say which.
The single most useful preparation step, and it is a lookup.
Situational judgement tests are scored against whichever competency or values framework the organisation uses. The job opening lists which one applies. Find it, read it, and put its competencies or values here in the job opening’s own words, one per line.
Only one of the three types rewards practice, and it rewards it under conditions.
Timed practice under realistic conditions is worth more than untimed review. No interruptions, no notes to hand. Cognitive and aptitude tests keep the same format, pacing and difficulty across administrations, which is why practice moves the score. Personality assessments do not reward preparation and should not be gamed; situational judgement rewards the framework you wrote out in step 5, not drilling.

The rest of the course

This lesson is one of sixty. The full course covers the UN system and its contract grades, every route in, building the profile, the application process end to end, assessments, the competency interview, what happens after it, and the agencies themselves.

See what is included and what it costs, or take the other free lessons:

They come early, and they are not a formality.

UN online pre-screening tests: aptitude, psychometrics and what to expect

Each step’s heading and the paragraph that opens it. I built the lesson to be worked through step by step, so it is above: interactive, and it ends in something you write for your own application.

They come early, and they are not a formality.

Four entities, three types, and the job opening settles which you face.

UNDP, UNICEF and WHO use online pre-screening tests, and the UN Secretariat uses them selectively, for specific job families and vacancy types. Not every vacancy at these agencies includes one. Of the three types, the cognitive test is timed and rewards practice; the personality assessment is untimed and is not to be gamed; the situational judgement test is scored against the framework the job opening lists.

Designed to be hard to finish, a second at a time.

Cognitive and aptitude tests are timed, typically fifteen to thirty minutes for thirty to fifty questions, and designed to be difficult to complete in the time allowed. That range gives a single question between eighteen seconds and a minute. Speed and accuracy both count.

Which organisation, and at what level.

Every check after this one compares against what you type here. It is asked rather than guessed, for the same reason the rest of this lesson tells you to go and look rather than assume: an assessment is part of your process or it is not, and only the job opening and the portal say which.

The single most useful preparation step, and it is a lookup.

Situational judgement tests are scored against whichever competency or values framework the organisation uses. The job opening lists which one applies. Find it, read it, and put its competencies or values here in the job opening’s own words, one per line.

Only one of the three types rewards practice, and it rewards it under conditions.

Timed practice under realistic conditions is worth more than untimed review. No interruptions, no notes to hand. Cognitive and aptitude tests keep the same format, pacing and difficulty across administrations, which is why practice moves the score. Personality assessments do not reward preparation and should not be gamed; situational judgement rewards the framework you wrote out in step 5, not drilling.