The ADF Job Opportunities Assessment, Explained

Who writes the test

The ADF’s guide to the Job Opportunities Assessment, revised in June 2025, does not name the company behind the test. Everything it does publish matches the Revelian Cognitive Ability Test (RCAT), from the Brisbane publisher Revelian, now part of Criteria:

• The same length and mix. 51 numerical, verbal and abstract reasoning questions in 20 minutes on both.
• The same advice. The ADF tells you to answer the questions you feel confident about first and come back to the rest if you have time, and says it is very rare to finish all 51. Revelian’s own candidate guidance says the same in nearly the same words.
• The same questions on screen. The JOA’s screens are headed “Cognitive Ability Test”, and the example questions in the ADF’s guides are the same items Revelian showed in its own example screenshots.

So this guide says the JOA matches the RCAT, which is as far as the evidence goes. The ADF has not said who supplies it, and the frame around the questions, with its numbered status grid and minutes-remaining bar, may be styled for the ADF.

When you sit it

Once you apply, ADF Careers emails you a unique link, and its April 2026 recruitment journey document asks you to complete the JOA within 14 days. You sit it online, on your own, before your Career Coaching Session, where a Military Recruiter goes through the result with you. Some older ADF Careers pages call that the YOU Session and place the test inside it; the dated documents put the test first.

• Laptop or desktop only. Mobile phones and iPads are not supported. If you open the link on an unsupported device it stops working and a new one has to be sent. Use Chrome, Edge, Firefox or Safari with pop-up blockers off, and do not click outside the browser once you start.
• Allow 30 minutes. Up to 10 minutes of practice questions, five of them, come before the 20-minute test. The ADF asks you not to open the link until you are ready and have 30 minutes free.
• No suitable device? You can sit it at your nearest ADF Careers Centre. The guide gives 13 19 01 for appointments.

What the screen looks like

Two screenshots of the live test in the June 2025 guide show one question per screen, with the question number out of 51 at the top. Beside it sit:

• a Question Status grid of numbered boxes: white for not answered, grey for answered, an orange outline for flagged;
• a timer bar that empties, with the whole minutes remaining written under it;
• Previous Question, Flag Question and Next Question buttons, so you can move both ways and mark a question to come back to.

Some questions take one answer and some take two, and the ADF’s own tip is to check how many each one asks for. Number questions show no options at all: you type the answer into a box, sometimes with a unit such as hours printed after it, and the answer is not always a whole number.

The three question types

The examples below are our own, written in the formats the ADF’s guides show.

Verbal

Odd two out. “Four of the following are alike in some way. Please select the other two”, over six words. From galah, wombat, lorikeet, kangaroo, magpie and cockatoo, the answer is wombat and kangaroo, the two that are not birds.

Which two statements together prove. Five statements, and only one pair makes the conclusion certain.

Numerical

• Series with a gap anywhere. On the live test the gap sits fourth of seven. Try 4, 9, 7, 12, 10, ?, 13: add 5, take away 2, so the answer is 15.
• Number grids. A 3 by 3 grid with one gap. Rows of 3, 4, 12, then 5, ?, 30, then 2, 7, 14: each row multiplies its first two numbers, so the gap is 6.
• Word problems with a unit. A tank holds 450 litres and drains at 60 litres a minute. How many minutes until it is empty? You type 7.5 in the box before “minutes”.

Abstract

Figures, and you pick the two that do not belong, from five or from six. In the six-figure example the figures combine two features, so the odd pair breaks a relationship rather than a single feature: in ours, four shapes hold as many stars as they have sides and two do not.

How results work

You never see a score. After the test, ADF Careers asks you to book a time with a Military Recruiter and then emails you your personalised Job Opportunities Report. What it does with your result is described only in outline, in the ADF’s August 2024 guide:

• Each role has its own requirement. If the role you want is not on your report, the guide says your Military Recruiter “may be able to assist you to identify other jobs”.
• Officer entry has to be “unlocked” by your JOA result before you can go on to an Officer Selection Board.

No cut-off, band or pass mark for any role is published in any ADF document we found, so be wary of any site that quotes one. Our practice reports your correct answers out of 51 and how you compare with other people practising here, never which roles you would unlock.

Attempts and verification

You can sit the JOA three times, with at least six months between attempts; the gap was twelve months until 2022. More attempts are allowed only if the ADF accepts a valid reason. A result from home may also be checked: you may be asked to complete a similar assessment under supervision at an ADF Careers Centre, and the ADF says suspected outside help could affect your application.

Does practice help?

The ADF says the JOA measures abilities rather than knowledge, so there is no need to study, and its 2024 guide adds that it does not recommend or endorse any preparation course or website. That includes us. What the ADF does do is publish example questions to help you become familiar with the question types and the format, and that is what practice is for: knowing the screen, the answer formats and the pace before the clock starts, so none of your 20 minutes goes on learning them. With three attempts six months apart, the first one is worth sitting well prepared.

How to spend the 20 minutes

What the JOA is not

The JOA is the one aptitude test every applicant sits. Some roles add more, none of which we simulate:

• Aviation testing. Officer aviation applicants also sit the written Officer Aviation Test Battery (OATB) at an ADF Careers Centre, then MACTS, a computer-based aviation aptitude system run over two four-hour sessions at RAAF Base East Sale. Airborne Electronics Analysts and Army Aircrew Operators attend the same Aviation Screening Program.
• Language aptitude. Linguist roles, and cyber applicants heading for long language courses, sit a Defence language aptitude assessment.
• The Officer Selection Board. Officer applicants are interviewed by a panel of officers and a psychologist and take part in group and individual activities.
• Everything else at the Assessment Session: psychology and Defence interviews, the medical, and for most roles the Pre-entry Fitness Assessment. Some roles add their own, such as the Clearance Diver Aptitude Assessment Test, the Special Forces Entry Test and music auditions.

If your guide mentions 75 questions or a maths test

Some preparation sites still describe a 75-question General Ability Test and a separate Mathematical Ability Test. The ADF’s 2017 guide did list a supervised General Ability Test and Mathematical Ability Test, though it gave no question counts. The maths test is missing from the July 2019 guide onwards. The online format of 51 questions in 20 minutes dates from 2021, when it was called Online Aptitude Testing, and it was renamed the Job Opportunities Assessment in 2022. ADF Careers’ own application-process page still mentions “general ability and mathematical ability questions”: trust the dated June 2025 guide over it. Documents from before July 2023, when ADF Careers took over recruiting, say Defence Force Recruiting.

Practise the test

• Revelian Cognitive Ability Test (RCAT) (51 questions · 20 minutes) - The closest match to the JOA: 51 mixed questions in 20 minutes, rotating through the three types, with Back, Next and Flag and a review grid to jump between questions, pick-two questions from five or six options, and typed answers that take decimals and show their unit. It starts straight away, with no practice round, and reports how many you got right and a percentile against CogniPrep users, not the roles you would unlock.
• Revelian Verbal Reasoning Test (RVRT) (35 questions · 10 minutes · free) - Revelian’s separate verbal paper, at a faster pace than the JOA. Good for drilling odd-two-out words, synonyms and analogies; it does not include the "together prove" questions.
• Revelian Numerical Reasoning Test (RNRT) (25 questions · 12 minutes) - Revelian’s separate numerical paper: series, number grids and word problems, every answer typed, no calculator.
• Revelian Abstract Reasoning Test (RART) (32 questions · 10 minutes) - Revelian’s separate abstract paper: pick the two of six figures that do not belong.

The JOA is one mixed paper, so the RCAT is the one to sit last, once the separate papers feel comfortable. The format, the rotation of question types and how Revelian reports to other employers are covered on the Revelian provider page, pacing in our RCAT test tips, and verification in can you cheat a Revelian test.