What the test is
Cappfinity assesses three kinds of skill: behavioural, cognitive and technical. Which ones you meet depends on the role and the employer. The Situational Strengths Test is the behavioural part. EDF’s 2023 early careers guide, which sent candidates to Cappfinity’s preparation hub, described it as a test that presents a range of scenarios you might meet at work and asks how you would choose to respond from a range of options. Cappfinity’s own hub calls this a behavioural assessment.
Cappfinity looks at each skill in three ways: Performance, how well you do it; Energy, how energised you feel using it; and Use, how often you use it. A skill you perform well, use regularly and enjoy is what Cappfinity calls a Strength. It says it is measuring both your capability and your motivation, so that the employer can be confident you have both for the role.
Question formats
Cappfinity lists the forms its behavioural questions can take, and one assessment can mix several. It may ask you to:
- Order responses from the approach you would be most to least likely to take, or from most to least like you.
- Select the most appropriate response to a question or scenario.
- Indicate on a scale where your actions or views would sit.
- Sort several responses into categories.
- Rate statements by how well you can do something and how much you love doing it.
- Some assessments also include written or video questions, which are the exception to the no-clock rule.
Is it timed, and how should you answer?
Cappfinity says that apart from video and written questions its behavioural assessments are not timed, and tells you to take your time to understand what each question is asking. It also says some questions are time recorded, and that any assessment which is time recorded will be explicitly stated, so read your instructions before you start.
Its advice on answering is to be honest and authentic: think about how you would actually behave in the scenario, and do not overthink it or try to second-guess what the organisation wants to hear. To prepare, it suggests reflecting on what friends and family know you for, what you enjoy and are like at your best, and which achievements you are proudest of.
In EDF’s 2023 process the test was untimed but had to be completed in one sitting, and EDF then prepared a feedback report for each candidate on their potential strengths. Successful candidates went on to a strengths-based video interview.
How our practice version works
Our practice comes as two games. The scenario game gives you 15 workplace scenarios with five possible responses each, and you rate every response from 1 to 5 for how effective it is. That is one way of answering a scenario, not every format above: there is no ranking, sorting, written or video task. There is no Back button and no skipping.
The strengths game shows 40 statements, two for each of 20 strength areas, and asks how much each is like you on a 1 to 5 scale. Cappfinity’s rating format asks two things, how well you do something and how much you love doing it; ours asks one. Some statements are reverse-worded, and the result is a profile rather than a pass or fail.
Both games also use your response time, which Cappfinity does not say it does for behavioural questions. In the scenario game 15% of the score comes from your average time per scenario, and in the strengths game answers slower than about six seconds count for less. That is our own modelling choice. On the real test, take the time Cappfinity tells you to take unless your instructions say questions are time recorded.