Denver SHL Assessment Test Practice
Most employers never tell candidates who supplies their tests. Denver does, on its own careers site, and it also says what kind of test to expect and when. That makes this one of the best-documented assessment processes in US public sector hiring.
Why This Page Is Unusually Reliable
Nearly every employer guide on the internet, including some of ours, has to work from vendor marketing or candidate reports. Denver is different: the city names its assessment vendor on its own candidate-facing page, which is the strongest kind of evidence there is.
On its Job Assessments and Testing page, the city tells candidates: “If you experience any technical difficulties accessing or taking the tests, please contact SHL by submitting an online request for assistance,” and gives SHL’s support URL and phone number. You cannot get much more direct than being told to call the vendor.
The same page tells you three things about the tests themselves:
- They are “Skills-based, not personality-based”.
- They are “Typically conducted during the interview stage”.
- They are “Designed to provide objective data on a candidate’s ability to perform specific job-related tasks”.
SHL corroborates the relationship from its side. On its customer testimonials page, SHL publishes a statement attributed to the city: “The City and County of Denver receives over 125,000 job applications per year. We use SHL assessments to screen candidates for many of our high-volume recruitments. Moving from a manual assessments process to an integration between SHL and Workday has saved us hundreds of hours of employee time, created a better candidate experience and reduced time to hire.”
What “Skills-Based” Rules In and Out
The city’s wording is genuinely useful for planning your preparation, because it rules something out. If the tests are skills-based and not personality-based, then the untimed questionnaires that ask how strongly you agree with statements about yourself are not what you are being sent. You can stop worrying about those.
What it points toward is SHL’s ability and job-related range: reasoning tests with clocks and right answers, and task-based exercises tied to the job. Neither Denver nor SHL names the specific products, so the rest of this page describes the formats SHL sells rather than asserting which one you will sit.
The SHL Formats Worth Knowing
Numerical reasoning
Tables and charts with questions that require you to extract the right figures and calculate under time pressure. The arithmetic is rarely the hard part; finding which numbers matter is. Relevant to finance, budget, analyst and audit roles across city government.
Verbal reasoning
A passage followed by statements you must mark true, false or cannot say. The discipline is answering only from the text, not from what you know to be true about the world. Relevant to policy, administrative and communications roles.
Inductive and deductive reasoning
Inductive items ask you to spot the rule governing a sequence of shapes, with no subject knowledge involved at all. Deductive items give you a set of constraints and ask for the one conclusion that follows. Both appear in technical, operational and analytical screening.
Situational judgement
Realistic workplace scenarios where you rank or choose responses. This is the closest format to the city’s description of measuring ability to perform job-related tasks, and it is common in public sector and public-facing hiring.
Practical Notes From Denver’s Own Page
- Assessment email comes from the city. Denver states that assessment correspondence comes from AssessmentTeam@denvergov.org, which is worth allowlisting and worth knowing as an anti-phishing check.
- Accommodations are available. Requests go to that same address. If you are entitled to extra time, ask before your window opens rather than during it.
- Technical problems go to SHL, not the city. Denver directs candidates to SHL support directly, by web form or phone.
Practice
Reasoning formats
Job-related judgement
The full range is on the SHL practice hub.
Frequently Asked Questions
Will every Denver city job include an assessment?
The city says assessments are used for many of its recruitments and are typically conducted during the interview stage. It does not say all roles include one. Your job posting and your recruiter are the authority for your specific application.
Which SHL test will I get?
Neither Denver nor SHL names the specific products, so nobody can honestly tell you. What Denver does tell you is the category: skills-based rather than personality-based. Practicing the reasoning and situational judgement formats covers the realistic possibilities.
Is it a personality questionnaire?
Denver states directly that its assessments are skills-based, not personality-based. That is one of the more useful sentences any employer publishes about its testing.
Who do I contact if the test will not load?
Denver directs candidates to SHL support rather than to the city, by online request form or by phone. Accommodation requests, by contrast, go to the city’s own assessment team address.
Are your tests the real Denver assessment?
No. These are independent practice exercises matching the published formats of SHL’s test range. They contain no real test items and are not supplied, reviewed or endorsed by the City and County of Denver or SHL.