How the Management Judgement Test works
There are 15 scenarios about the day-to-day management of a team. Each gives four possible actions, and you choose one you would be most likely to take and one you would be least likely to take. Some scenarios are short videos, the rest are text.
It is used for jobs from Executive Officer to Senior Executive Officer. Your pattern of responses is scored and reported as a percentile against other applicants.
The five aspects it measures
The Civil Service defines each one:
- Collaborative: empowering and developing others, working as a team, sharing knowledge.
- Decisive: using evidence to make effective and fair decisions.
- Empathetic: considering others’ needs and feelings, acting in a calm and resilient manner.
- Confident: having courage in your convictions, taking responsibility and setting expectations.
- Agile: self-aware and able to adapt quickly to change.
How to choose most and least likely
Use these steps on each scenario:
- Read it as the manager. Work out what has gone wrong and who is affected.
- Pick least likely first. The action that ignores the problem, damages trust or embarrasses someone in front of others is usually clearest.
- For most likely, choose what a good manager would do, even when it is the harder conversation.
- Prefer actions that deal with the cause directly, involve the people concerned and set a clear next step.
Worked example
You manage a team of five. Two team members disagree about how to split a new piece of work, and the argument has started to spill into team meetings.
A: Meet them together, set out what the work needs, and agree a split with them. B: Decide the split yourself and announce it at the next meeting. C: Tell them to sort it out between themselves. D: Raise their behaviour at the team meeting so everyone sees it is not acceptable.
Most likely: A. It is decisive and collaborative, and both people leave knowing what happens next. Least likely: D. Criticising two people in front of the team damages trust and does nothing to settle the work. B settles the work but loses their buy-in, and C avoids the problem.
This is our reading. The Civil Service does not publish its key.
Tips for the real Management Judgement Test
- Read the five aspect definitions before you start, and ask which one each scenario is testing.
- Answer as the manager in the job you applied for, not as a team member.
- The wording is most and least likely to take, but answer as an effective manager would, not as you might on a bad day.
- Use the transcript when a video moves too fast. Videos can be replayed.
- Do the practice questions at the start. They show you the real format.
Practise the Management Judgement Test on CogniPrep
Our version gives you 15 untimed scenarios, three for each of the five aspects, each with four actions. You mark one Most likely and a different one Least likely, and you cannot go back. Each scenario earns one mark for picking our best action as most likely and one for picking our worst as least likely, a rule that is ours because the Civil Service does not publish its marking. Video scenarios appear as transcripts. Your result is a percentile against other CogniPrep users.