NS Traineeship Assessment Practice
Preparation guide for the Ixly assessments in NS traineeship selection
Which half of the NS process this page is about
Ixly publishes a case study on Nederlandse Spoorwegen describing two quite different uses, and only one of them is selection. That distinction is the most useful thing on this page, because the two mean opposite things when they land in your inbox.
- External traineeship applicants: this is selection. NS uses Ixly to screen and rank candidates for its traineeship, running more than 750 personality, motivation and drive questionnaires a year. If you have applied to an NS traineeship and an Ixly invitation has arrived, this is a sift.
- Internal mobility, from 2021: this is development. NS also runs an internal programme using Ixly instruments to help existing staff move around the organisation. Nobody is being screened out of a job there, and it should not be approached as a test.
One caution worth stating plainly. A Dutch preparation site claims the NS procedure includes “een capaciteitentest van LTP of Ixly”, that is, possibly a different vendor entirely. We have not relied on that; this page rests on Ixly's own case study, which is stronger evidence. But it does mean that if your NS invitation names a platform other than Test-Toolkit, believe the invitation.
What an Ixly sitting involves
Ixly administers everything through the Test-Toolkit: an invitation email with a unique link, an overview screen listing the tests assigned to you, and a short questionnaire covering age, gender and education level before the first one. That last answer chooses the group you are compared against.
- Forty-five seconds per item, on every item, with no overall clock you manage and no way to bank time.
- An unanswered item is scored as wrong. Ixly says so on the instruction screen. There is no blank to protect, so always commit an answer.
- No going back, and closing the test does not pause the item's clock: you return to the next item, not the one you left.
- It adapts, so the test gets harder as you succeed and stops once it has measured you. Half right is a normal result.
- A worked example and three untimed practice items come before each test.
Because the NS case study emphasises personality, motivation and drive questionnaires rather than capacity tests, expect the WPV or something like it to be a large part of what you are sent. That half is untimed and has no right answers.
What comes back, and why the number needs a group attached
An Ixly report gives a sten from 1 to 10, a T-score, a percentile and an IQ score, each with an 80% confidence interval. The sten has a mean of 5.5, so a 5 is an average result and not a fail. Ixly warns about this in its own manual, because on a Dutch school report a 5 is an onvoldoende and candidates read the two the same way.
The comparison group is your education level: VMBO, MBO, HBO or WO. Ixly's worked example reports one raw score as the 92nd percentile against one group and the 25th against another. For a graduate traineeship that means you are being compared against other graduates, which is a harder comparison than a general population would be for exactly the same performance.
How to prepare
Treat the questionnaire and the capacity test completely differently
The capacity tests reward pace and accuracy. The questionnaire rewards neither, because it has no right answers. What it does reward is using the full scale: a profile made of 3s is flat across all 25 scales and gives a recruiter nothing to read, which is a worse outcome than clear high and low points. Answering as the person you imagine a rail operator wants produces contradictions, because the scales pull against each other.
Build the 35-second habit
Commit an answer at around 35 seconds and move on. An item you let expire is scored as wrong anyway, so hesitation buys nothing.
Practise the two-answer verbal format specifically
Ixly's Verbale Analogieën asks you to pick two words from six that are linked the same way as two given words. One mark for the pair, and fifteen possible pairs, so guessing is worth far less than on an ordinary multiple choice. It catches people out because nothing else works like it.
Sit it uninterrupted
The item clock runs while you are away from the screen, so an interruption is a question given up rather than a pause.
Practise the exact tests
Our Ixly practice hub has the three ACT subtests, Cognitive Ability Pro, Stroomdiagrammen and the WPV personality questionnaire. Cijferreeksen is free.