GITP Connector Ability Tips: Use the Minutes, Never Leave a Blank
GITP’s Connector Ability gives you minutes per item, scores a blank as wrong and reports a T-score against your education level. How to prepare for all three.
If your invitation says GITP, PiCompany, Connector Ability or Talent Match, you are sitting the tests PiCompany built. GITP, the Utrecht assessment firm, bought PiCompany in 2010 and merged it in 2022, and PiCompany is now one of its trademarks. The main cognitive test is Connector Ability, and three things about it change how you should prepare: the time you get, the way a blank is scored, and the scale your result comes back on.
You get minutes, so use them
Connector Ability puts a clock on every item rather than on the test as a whole. In 2007 PiCompany gave 180 seconds an item; in 2009 it halved that to 90 seconds, set so that about three quarters of the norm group could answer within it. GITP's 2023 candidate manual now says only “a limited number of minutes per question, but for most people this time is more than enough”.
That matters because at least one preparation site tells candidates they will get “maybe only 10 to 20 seconds” a question, which contradicts every figure the vendor has published. And GITP records speed without scoring it: PiCompany's FAQ says response time is not used in the score. Racing through a test that does not reward speed is the most expensive mistake available here. If you have an answer at 30 seconds, spend another 20 checking it against every part of the item.
Three parts, each with its own trap
The parts always come in the same order, each introduced by an untimed explanation and sample questions, which are identical in GITP's practice test and the real one. Each part is adaptive: your answers choose the next item, and the part stops when your level is clear. PiCompany's last published range was 10 to 15 items a part.
GITP ran its own items past ChatGPT in 2023. The chatbot could not read the figure items at all, and on number series it solved the easy ones but failed as soon as several operations happened at once. That is a useful map of where the marks are: changing differences, doubling steps and two series woven together are what separate candidates.
An early slip is not a disaster
Some preparation advice warns that an early mistake on an adaptive test makes it very hard to reach your real level. PiCompany's FAQ says the opposite: if someone answers an item wrongly by accident, the program corrects for it, and the only consequence is that they are asked a few more questions. Treat each item as a fresh start. The candidates who lose marks after a slip are the ones who rush the next three items to make up for it.
Your result is a T-score against a group your employer chose
GITP reports T-scores, where 50 is the average of the norm group, and writes each one as three percentages. At T 50: 50% of the norm group scored lower, 19% about the same and 31% higher. You get an overall G-factor plus a bar for each part, and the G-factor is calculated from all your answers together rather than by averaging the three parts, so it can land above or below their average.
The norm group is an education level, MBO4, Bachelor or Master, picked by the employer when ordering and not changeable afterwards. GITP's own sample report reads one performance as T 50 against Master, T 56 against Bachelor and T 63 against MBO4. Ask which level you are being compared with. PiCompany's guidance names a minimum of T 45 or T 50 as the most common bars, with 40 to 45 sometimes treated as a grey zone.
GITP does not give you an IQ. It says a score in the middle block corresponds on average to IQ 90 at VMBO level, 100 at MBO, 110 at HBO and 115 at WO.
Before the day
The questionnaires have no right answers
Talent Match always includes the Reflector Big Five Personality: 144 statements written in the third person, rated from -2 (untrue) to +2 (true). GITP's own instruction is to answer for how you behave at work and, where it varies, to go with what you do most of the time. Reflector Drives ranks twelve work drives from comparisons and is released to the employer only with your approval. Neither has a pass mark, and a profile written for the job you want fits neither you nor the job.
What to do this week
Sit one part at a time, untimed at first, until you can name the rule type within the first 15 seconds of an item. Then sit the three parts back to back on a laptop, with pen and paper, and look at two numbers: how many items expired, and whether your last part was weaker than your first. Expired items are a habit you can fix in a session. A fading third part means practising the whole sitting, breaks included.
Our GITP practice tests cover each Connector Ability part on its own, the full test with a break between parts, Verbal Analogies, the Reflector Big Five and Reflector Drives. They use 90 seconds an item, score a blank as wrong, and translate your result into GITP's T-score wording. They are in English with GITP's Dutch part names, which transfers almost completely on the figure and number parts and least well on Verbal Analogies.