Guide25 August 20267 min read

Can You Retake an Assessment Test? Retake Rules by Provider

Whether you can retake an aptitude test, how long results stay valid, what happens if you fail, and how the answer differs between SHL, Aon, Criteria, Thomas and game-based vendors.

The question has two halves and they have different answers

Can the test be retaken technically? Almost always yes. Publishers generate parallel forms precisely so a candidate can sit again without seeing the same items. Will this employer let you? That is a policy decision made by the employer, not by the vendor, and it is the half that actually determines your outcome. Asking the recruiter is not optional here; it is the only route to a real answer.

Retake questions arrive in a specific emotional register: something went wrong, the internet dropped, the clock ran differently than expected, or the result came back and the rejection followed. The good news is that this is a much more negotiable area than candidates assume. The bad news is that the answer depends almost entirely on who you ask and how quickly.

Start with which situation you are actually in

Something broke mid-test: connection dropped, page froze, timer misbehavedReport it today, in writing You have not started yet and want longer, a break, or a different formatThis is an adjustment request, not a retake You finished, you were rejected, and you want to try againUsually a reapplication question rather than a retake You are applying to a second role at the same employerAsk whether your existing result carries over

What technically happens when you retake

Modern assessment platforms are built with retesting in mind, and it shapes how the tests themselves are constructed.

Item generation

Several major tests generate items from algorithms rather than drawing from a fixed authored bank. The Thomas Aptitude assessment inherits this design from the battery it descends from. You will not see the same questions twice, which is the whole point.

Parallel forms

Where items are authored rather than generated, publishers maintain multiple equivalent versions of the same test. Employers switch between them across cycles specifically to blunt the advantage of having seen one.

Adaptive delivery

Adaptive tests select items based on your answers, so two sittings by the same person diverge immediately. This also means a retake result is comparable to the first one even though the item sets differ.

Retest flags

Some platforms record that a candidate has sat the instrument before and surface it to the employer. Assume your retake is visible as a retake.

Expected uplift

Retest effects on cognitive tests are real and front-loaded: a second sitting typically scores higher than a first, and a third adds much less. This is precisely why employers restrict retakes rather than because they are being unhelpful.

How long results stay valid

There is no universal answer and anyone who gives you one is guessing. What is generally true:

Employers set the validity period, not publishers. Twelve months is a common figure in graduate recruitment, six months in high-volume operational hiring, and some employers treat every application as a fresh sitting.
Agencies typically reuse results across placements. If a recruitment agency assessed you, the same result usually travels with your file to several clients for a defined period. Ask your consultant, because it changes whether retaking is even available to you.
Personality results are often treated as more durable than ability results. The reasoning is that traits are more stable than test-day performance, so some employers will reuse a personality profile for longer than a reasoning score.
Ability results do not transfer between employers. Even where two employers use the same vendor, the result belongs to the employer that commissioned it.

If something went wrong during the test

This is the situation with by far the best outcomes, and it depends almost entirely on speed.

Report the same day

Email the recruiter and, if there is one, the platform support address. State what happened, at approximately what time, on what device and connection, and how far through you were. A message sent within hours reads as a technical incident. The same message sent after a rejection reads as an appeal.

Do not immediately re-open the link

On some platforms the invitation link can be resumed and on others reopening it consumes your attempt. If the sitting was disrupted, ask before you touch it again.

Say what you want

“My connection dropped during section two; please could the assessment be reset” is actionable. A description of the problem with no request attached usually generates a sympathetic reply and no reset.

If you were simply rejected

The honest position: an immediate retake of the same assessment for the same role is unusual. What is common is reapplying in the next cycle, and most large employers have a stated waiting period, frequently six or twelve months.

Two things are worth doing before that next attempt.

First, find out what you actually sat. A remarkable number of candidates reapply without ever establishing which vendor was involved, which means they prepare generically again. Identifying the provider from the invitation is the highest-value hour available to a reapplicant.

Second, be realistic about what will change. The retest effect is real but modest, and it arrives mostly from familiarity rather than from improvement. If your first sitting was derailed by unfamiliarity, a retake genuinely can go better. If it reflected your current ability on a format you understood, expect a similar result and put the effort into the parts of the application where the variance is larger.

Vendor by vendor, what is actually known

Almost every published retake rule is set by an employer rather than by the test publisher, so specific claims of the form “SHL allows one retake” should be treated with care. What can be said honestly:

Large reasoning publishersincluding SHL, Aon, Korn Ferry Talent Q and Cubiks all maintain multiple forms and support retesting technically. Whether you get one is the employer's call.
Speed batteries such as the Thomas Aptitude assessment generate items algorithmically, so the retake is a genuinely fresh test rather than a memory exercise.
Personality inventories are rarely retaken, because a second profile differing markedly from the first raises a question rather than replacing an answer.
Game-based assessments are the most restricted in practice. Several vendors treat a first sitting as the valid one on the reasoning that a second exposure changes the behaviour being measured.

The email that works

Short, factual, with a specific request and no apology. Something close to: “I sat the online assessment for the graduate programme this morning. Partway through the second section the page stopped responding for around four minutes and the timer continued. Please could the assessment be reset, or the circumstances noted against my result? Happy to provide any further detail.”

Note what that does. It gives a time, a specific fault, an effect on the measurement, and one clear ask with an easier fallback. Recruiters grant requests that are easy to action.

The best use of a second attempt

If you do get one, do not simply sit it again in the same state. Take one full-length practice run of the right vendor's format first, decide your guessing policy in advance, and sort out the environment: a real screen, a stable connection, no interruptions. That is where the recoverable marks are, and the week-before plan compresses neatly into a day if that is all you have.