Predictive Index Tips: The 12-Minute PICA and the Behavioral Assessment

Predictive Index sends two instruments that are frequently used together and measure nothing in common. The PI Cognitive Assessment is a hard 12-minute speed test with right answers. The PI Behavioral Assessment is an untimed adjective checklist with none. Candidates who prepare for one and are surprised by the other lose ground on the one they could have prepared for.

Pacing the cognitive test

Fourteen seconds a question is not enough time to recover a question you have not understood on the first read. As on the Criteria CCAT, the real cost of a ninety-second question is the four questions you never reached, and at least one of those would have taken you ten seconds.

The three question types are interleaved rather than sat as blocks, so switching between modes of thinking is part of the load. Practising each type in isolation makes you faster at each type and no faster on the actual paper, so do at least one mixed run before test day.

Verbal items

Analogies, synonyms, antonyms and sentence completion. There are no reading passages, so this is vocabulary rather than comprehension. On analogies, put the relationship into words before looking at the options, because the distractors are written for people who match on subject matter rather than on relation.

Numerical items

Mental arithmetic, number series, percentages and short word problems, with no data tables. The arithmetic is light and the pace is not, so fluency is what pays: percentage decomposition into 10 percent and 1 percent, common fraction and decimal equivalents, and checking number series for first differences, then ratios, then alternating patterns.

Abstract items

Shape sequences where you identify the rule and pick what comes next. These are the items most closely associated with how quickly someone picks up unfamiliar work, and they are also the ones candidates most often skip because they look time-consuming. Work one dimension at a time across the whole sequence: shape, count, rotation, shading, position.

The behavioral assessment, and the gap it measures

You are shown a list of adjectives twice. The first pass asks which words describe how others expect you to behave at work. The second asks which describe who you really are. Your choices map to the four drives, and there are no right answers.

The detail worth knowing is that the difference between the two lists is itself a signal. It is read as how much you are modifying your natural behaviour to meet the expectations around you, which is information about strain rather than about ability. If you fill the first list with the traits of an ideal employee and the second one honestly, you manufacture a large gap and report something about yourself that is not true.

Answer both lists quickly and honestly. The instrument is short enough that deliberating over individual words produces a worse result rather than a better one.

The four drives, briefly

Dominance is how much you push to influence people and outcomes. Extraversion is how much you draw on social contact. Patience is your preference for steadiness over change. Formality is how much structure and precision you want around you. Roles differ in the pattern they suit, and no pattern is better than another in the abstract, which is why trying to guess the target profile is a poor use of the six minutes.

Where to put your preparation time

All of it into the cognitive test, because that is the half where preparation changes an outcome. Practising the verbal, numerical and abstract skills separately lets you find which of the three is costing you time, then sit them mixed to rehearse the switching. For the behavioral assessment, knowing the two-list format is the whole of the preparation.