Clevry Test Tips: The Page You Cannot Come Back To

Clevry is the name Criterion Partnership has traded under since April 2021, and its tests turn up at the first sift for UK retail, hospitality, logistics and graduate schemes, often on a portal carrying the employer's own name. Two things about it change how you should prepare. The level in brackets on your invitation is a different test, not a different difficulty setting. And the platform will not let you leave a page until every question on it is answered.

First, work out which test you have been sent

Clevry sells its verbal and numerical tests at three levels, and each has its own clock and its own comparison group. The level is printed in brackets after the test's name, on the invitation and on the report the employer reads: "Verbal Reasoning Test (Enhanced)". Prep sites still sell the same levels under their old Criterion names, which is worth knowing when you are choosing what to practise.

Notice that Enhanced verbal is the shortest verbal clock, not Essential. A graduate invited to the 11-minute Expert test who practises the 9-minute Enhanced one is practising the wrong pace and the wrong material: Expert passages read like magazine articles with figures in the prose, while Enhanced ones are policies, applications and terms. If your portal says Psycruit, that is Clevry's candidate platform. And if your invitation mentions the CCAT, you have been sent Criteria, a different company altogether.

The page rule, and the two habits it rules out

A Clevry ability test is built as pages. On the verbal, numerical and checking tests each page is one passage, table or pair of lists on the left and a group of questions on the right. Clevry's candidate FAQ gives the rule: you can change your answers while you are on the page, "but once you proceed you will be unable to go back to any previous pages", and "the system requires that you complete all of the questions on the page before moving on."

A page-by-page routine that fits the rule:

• Read the four questions before the passage. You are then reading for four specific claims rather than for everything, and you can answer them in any order.
• Give each page about a quarter of the clock. On Enhanced verbal that is 2 minutes 15 seconds; on Expert numerical, 5 minutes.
• Check before you leave. For each answer, find the sentence or the figure that proves it. If you cannot, that is the answer to look at again.

Cannot Say is where most verbal marks go

Clevry's verbal test asks True, False or Cannot Say, in its own words: "Select Cannot Say if you can't say for certain from the information given whether the statement is true or false." Two opposite mistakes cost candidates marks. One is answering True to something the passage merely makes plausible, or to something you know is true in the world. The other is retreating to Cannot Say when the deciding sentence is simply further down the section. The fix for both is the same: before you commit, point to the sentence. No sentence, Cannot Say.

Watch the small words, too. "61% of those who replied" is not "61% of readers", "up to £150" is not "£150", and a passage that gives one reason for something has not ruled out a second.

The numerical test: your own calculator, and a Cannot say of its own

Clevry allows a calculator on its numerical tests but does not build one in: candidates use their own. Practise with the one you will use on the day. Each question has five options, and on some of them the fifth is Cannot say, which is right only when a figure you need is genuinely missing, such as profit from a table of prices with no costs. Clevry's own practice question shows it both ways, so treat it as a real option rather than a trap or a refuge. And because the five options are usually spread well apart, an estimate made before you touch the calculator removes most of them.

What the employer actually sees

Clevry reports every result as a sten from 1 to 10 against a comparison group for your exact test and level, under five band labels from "Low overall performance" to "Outstanding performance". A 5 or 6 is the average band and is not a fail. The employer adds a red, amber or green flag at thresholds they choose; Clevry publishes no pass mark.

The report also prints your time beside the average, with the note that completion time "is not an indication of ability". Clevry does not score speed, and 98% of candidates finish, so there is nothing to gain by finishing early and a good deal to gain by using the spare minutes to check a page before leaving it. It is also why looking answers up is a poor bet: help is slow, and the time is on the page next to the score. We cover that in more detail in can you cheat a Clevry test.

Personality and situational judgement

Many Clevry invitations add the Clevry Personality Questionnaire, statements rated on a five-point agreement scale. There are no right answers, and Clevry advises candidates not to be indecisive but not to be overly decisive either, so use the middle point only when it is true. Similar statements come back later on, and a Social Desirability scale notices over-flattering answers, so describe how you usually are at work. The Graduate/Managerial situational judgement test asks for the most and the least effective of four responses in each of 15 scenarios; each pick is half the marks, so choose the least effective as carefully as the most.

Where to practise

Our Clevry practice tests build each level separately, at its real length and on its real clock, as pages you must complete before moving on. The Expert verbal and Enhanced numerical tests are free to try. For identifying a test from an invitation more generally, see which assessment provider am I taking.