TLC Care Assessment Practice
Two Thomas instruments, one untimed and one very much not. A guide to both, and to why a care operator assesses for retention rather than for raw ability
What TLC Care uses, and why the framing matters
TLC Care operates residential and nursing homes. Thomas International publishes a case study naming both the Behaviour assessment, known as the PPA, and the Aptitude assessment, known as the GIA, and frames the whole thing around retention and engagement rather than around filtering applicants.
That framing is worth taking seriously rather than reading as marketing. Social care has a structural turnover problem, and an operator that assesses for retention is trying to find people who will still be there in a year, not people who score highest. It changes what a good answer looks like: presenting yourself as someone you are not is a strategy that only pays off until you actually start the job.
The Behaviour assessment, in five lines
- Twenty-four screens, four adjectives on each.
- Choose the word most like you and the word least like you.
- Not timed, typically under eight minutes, works on a phone.
- No score, no pass mark. Thomas says outright that you cannot fail it.
- Output is three DISC graphs: your work mask, your behaviour under pressure, and the difference between them.
In a care setting the pressure graph is the one that means something. The job has bad shifts, and how someone behaves during one is the actual question.
The Aptitude assessment is a different animal
The GIA is where people get caught out, because nothing about the PPA prepares you for it. It is five short tasks in a fixed order, each lasting between two and five minutes, with eight unscored practice items before each one. The whole series runs roughly thirty to forty-five minutes including instructions and Thomas recommends doing it in one sitting.
The GIA rule nobody tells candidates
The GIA is negatively marked, and the size of the penalty differs between tasks because it depends on how many answer options each task offers. A task with two options punishes a wrong answer harder than a task with five, because a guess is likelier to land by accident.
Thomas's own instruction is to work both quickly and accurately, and it states that speed and accuracy are equally important. That is not a platitude here, it is a description of the scoring model. Racing through the two-option Reasoning task while guessing is the single worst thing you can do to your score.
Two practical details from Thomas's own candidate guidance. The GIA is mouse only and will not run on a phone or tablet, and Thomas recommends plugging in a real mouse rather than using a trackpad. There is also no back button and no review screen: one item at a time, click, next.
Preparing for a care sector process
The tests are not the interview
Care recruitment leans heavily on values-based interviewing, scenario questions and safeguarding awareness. Two short Thomas instruments do not replace any of that. Budget your preparation accordingly.
Practise the GIA tasks once, not fifty times
The tasks are simple to describe and awkward to do at speed. The gain from practice is almost entirely in the first run: knowing that the Reasoning statement disappears, knowing that Number Speed is a distance comparison rather than a sum. Beyond that you are training the trait rather than the test.
Do the PPA honestly, then be ready to discuss it
In a retention-focused process, the profile is likely to come up in conversation. Knowing what your own answers said about you is more useful than having produced an impressive profile you would then have to defend.
Frequently Asked Questions
How long does the whole thing take?
The PPA is under eight minutes. The GIA is around thirty to forty-five minutes including instructions and practice items. They may arrive as separate links.
Can I use a calculator on the GIA?
No, and it would not help. The Number Speed task is explicitly a mental task involving small single-step comparisons rather than calculation, and Thomas frames every step of it as working in your head.
Can I do it on my phone?
The PPA yes, the GIA no. Thomas tells candidates the aptitude assessment will not run on mobile devices and asks for a desktop or laptop.
Is there a pass mark?
No source read here mentions a GIA pass mark, and there is no pass mark on the PPA at all. Thomas reports the GIA against norm groups rather than as a percentage, and any cut score is set by the employer for the role.
What if I have a disability or English is not my first language?
Ask for adjustments before you sit it, not afterwards. The GIA is a speeded test, which makes extra time a meaningful adjustment, and the Word Meaning task in particular is sensitive to first-language vocabulary. Employers are generally obliged to consider reasonable adjustments and cannot act on a request you never made.
Practise both
Our Thomas practice hub has the PPA and all five GIA tasks, both as individual drills and as a single battery run with the real negative marking applied.