How Numerosity works
HireVue’s research paper defines Numerosity as a mental arithmetic task where players are presented with a set of numbers and asked to identify a combination that, when summed, subtracted, multiplied or divided, yields a target result. The game runs for a fixed three minutes, and there is no set number of items: each level you resolve is followed by the next until the time is up.
Every HireVue cognitive game runs on the same level ladder. Complete a level and you move up to a harder one, fail it and you move down, with level 100 as the ceiling. HireVue’s white paper says difficulty adjusts to the candidate and that levels are procedurally generated, so no two candidates see the same sequence. It does not publish which operations or how many numbers appear at which level.
The games run on a phone or a computer, use colour-blind-friendly palettes, and come with instructions before play. HireVue’s candidate blog adds that each game has its own instructions and starts with some easy levels.
What HireVue’s own data shows
Numerosity is one of the two games in the scoring model HireVue describes in its 2023 paper in Frontiers in Psychology. The model was trained on 565 research panellists to predict their scores on a 16-item ICAR ability test plus four Cognitive Reflection Test items, and the final level reached on Numerosity was one of its two most important inputs, alongside the total levels played on Shapedance.
In that panel, the share of levels won tracked measured ability more closely than any other Numerosity feature (r = 0.48 against the ability questionnaire), with final level close behind (0.44). The number of levels played correlated 0.08, which is almost nothing. Getting through more levels did not go with higher ability; winning the ones you played did.
A second sample of 3,044 real job applicants reached a similar final level, 38.7 on average, while losing fewer levels (3.5 against 5.8) and playing fewer in total (25.4 against 28.2). Their win ratio was correspondingly higher, 0.86 against the panel’s 0.79. The panel’s figures for three minutes of Numerosity:
- Final level: average 39.4, range 4 to 91.
- Highest level reached: average 40.2, range 9 to 91.
- Levels played: average 28.2, of which 22.4 won and 5.8 lost.
- Share of levels won: average 0.79, range 0.38 to 1.
How it is scored
HireVue’s white paper says its cognitive games record the highest level completed, the ratio of levels won to lost, and the total number of levels played, and its paper lists the features as maximum level, final level, levels won, levels lost, total levels and win ratio. These feed a model trained to predict a conventional ability test, so your result is an estimate of cognitive ability rather than a count of right answers.
A lost level is not free. It moves you down the ladder, and levels lost correlated negatively with measured ability in HireVue’s panel (r = -0.40). HireVue says candidates are compared only with others in their own country or region, and it does not publish a pass mark: the employer decides what score it needs.
How our practice version works
Our Numerosity follows HireVue’s published definition: a target number and an operation at the top, and a grid of number tiles below. The grid grows from four tiles to nine as you climb, and the operations unlock in order: addition first, then subtraction, multiplication and division. The level tells you how many tiles to pick and commits as soon as you have picked them. Any combination that reaches the target counts, and subtraction and division always take the larger number first, because a tap cannot express order.
The clock is three minutes and the ladder caps at 100. We move you up two levels for a win and down one for a loss; HireVue publishes only the direction, so the step sizes and our difficulty curve are our own, and our difficulty stops rising at about level 40, close to the published average. Our score weights the highest level you reach most, then your share of levels won, then levels won per minute. That follows the features HireVue lists, but HireVue’s own weights are not public. A pause button stops our clock.