Sova Assessment Practice Tests
Sova is one continuous sitting, not a series of stages: ability tests, situational judgement, a personality questionnaire and often a video interview, all in one go. Practise every section we can simulate, built the way Sova builds it, with no countdown on screen and your response times recorded anyway.
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Numerical Reasoning
Read a table or chart of business data and calculate the answer. No clock on screen, but Sova records how long each correct answer takes and scores it alongside accuracy. A calculator is expected.
Verbal Reasoning
Judge statements against a short business passage as True, False or Cannot Say. Untimed on screen, timed in the score. Sold by Sova at a foundation and an advanced level.
Situational Judgement
Pick the most effective and the least effective response to a workplace scenario. Sova asks for one best and one worst rather than a rating for every option, and scores the two separately.
Premium Tests
Logical Reasoning
Find the rule running through a sequence of shape frames and choose the frame that comes next. Sova describes it as pattern recognition and abstract thinking using shapes and sequences.
Personality Questionnaire
Rank five statements from least like you to most like you, one per column and no ties. Sova reports 18 work traits built on the HEXACO model, in three groups, with no overall score.
Checking and Accuracy
Compare a record against its copy and flag the fields that do not match. Some records are identical, so flagging a correct field costs as much as missing a wrong one.
Learnability
Work out a hidden rule from feedback alone, then keep up when the rule changes without warning. Sova measures how quickly you acquire a new rule, not how much you get right.
There is no clock. The test is still timed.
Sova's reasoning tests are not time limited by default. No countdown appears and no per-question clock runs. But the practitioner report that goes to the employer says that “although the tests are not time-limited, the time taken to make a response is recorded and taken into account in the score”, and Sova's anti-cheating page adds that “unusually fast or slow responses are flagged”.
So the missing timer is not permission to take as long as you like. It is the removal of the warning. Our practice tests reproduce that exactly: nothing counts down, every response time is recorded, and only the time on your correct answers feeds the score.
One caveat: a countdown does exist as a feature an employer can switch on, so some deployments show one. If yours does, nothing you practised here becomes wrong. You simply get a warning we do not give you.
How to tell you have been invited to a Sova assessment
The word “Sova” may never appear
Sova is white labelled. It sells branded welcome pages, the employer's colours applied to the assessment and the reports, and the employer's logos, text, images and video inside the questions. This is the main reason candidates cannot name the vendor afterwards.
Look at the domain
The candidate test player is hosted at sovaonline.com, not at the employer's own domain and not at sovaassessment.com, which is the sales site. Support links point at sovaassessment.zendesk.com. Either is a giveaway.
You land in a hub, not a wizard
Sova describes it as “a variety of activities selected by your potential employer for you to complete within the assessment hub”, with practice tasks to clear first. It is a checklist of activities rather than a single linear test.
How a Sova sitting is put together, and what we are honest about
Every candidate sits a different assessment, and that is by design. Sova calls it a “blended assessment approach, which enables you to pick and choose from our assessment database”, and says content is “completely bespoke based on the organisational and role requirements”, so a tailored assessment does not always include the same question types. Its published Early Careers bundle makes the structure visible: the Image Personality Questionnaire and a Situational Judgement Test are compulsory, while Numerical Reasoning, Logical Reasoning and Learnability are each marked optional, meaning switched on or off per employer. Practise the sections; do not expect a fixed paper.
It is one sitting, and the stamina is part of it. Sova tells candidates to “complete all tasks in one sitting, if possible”, and each section opens with an instruction screen and at least one unscored practice question. Our games skip that practice question, because this whole site is practice, but do use the real one: it is free time. If you lose your connection, the real assessment can be resumed from the link in your invitation email.
The situational judgement test is not the one you have practised elsewhere. Sova asks for the best and the worst response and leaves the rest unranked. SHL, Cubiks, Cappfinity and Kenexa all ask you to rate every option from very ineffective to very effective. Those are different tasks with different failure modes, which is why our Sova SJT is a new build rather than a relabelled one.
Item counts and timings on this site are ours, not Sova's. Sova publishes no item count and no time limit for any individual test, and the prep sites disagree by a factor of four: 50 to 80 questions in 25 to 30 minutes from one, 20 to 100 or more from another, 15 numerical questions in the Bain deployment from a third. We have sized our tests to be worth practising rather than to match a figure nobody can source, and we would rather say so than publish a confident number.
Two things we could not establish either way. First, whether the real player has a Back or Previous control: Sova only ever documents Next, and Next does not advance until you have made the required selections, so we have built forward-only. Second, whether wrong answers are penalised: no source anywhere, Sova or otherwise, documents any penalty, and the published scoring formula (correct answers plus the time taken on them) has no room for one. We build with no penalty and we are telling you that is an inference.
Sova is genuinely mobile, and so are these tests. Sova says its assessments “are compatible on a mobile, tablet or laptop” and Santander bought it partly because it wanted an assessment optimised for mobile devices. Its Image Personality Questionnaire is explicitly mobile-first with a swipe motion. Our tests work properly on a phone for the same reason. The one exception Sova names is the virtual assessment centre, which it does not recommend on a phone because the screen may be too small.
Parts of a Sova assessment we do not simulate, and why
These are real Sova products. You may meet any of them in your sitting. We are not going to build a rough approximation and call it practice, so here is what each one is and what you can usefully do instead.
Video interview
One-way and live interviews run on the same platform, and in the one-way format a prep source describes one minute to prepare and up to three minutes to answer, with re-recording allowed or not at the employer's choice. Sova can score these with AI as well as with human assessors. Usefully, Sova states that “time is not recorded on the video recording sections, so this will not affect your results”. We have no basis for a rating model here, so we do not build one.
Image Personality Questionnaire
Compulsory in Sova's Early Careers bundle: 18 traits across 87 items, swipeable and mobile-first, at “half the completion time” of the written questionnaire. The scoring is the same 18 traits our personality questionnaire covers, so that is the right preparation. The stimulus is bespoke imagery we would have to invent, which is why there is no separate game for it.
Motivation Questionnaire
Real and sold, with a published average internal consistency of 0.84. Sova publishes no list of what it measures anywhere, so we cannot say what it reports and cannot score it honestly. There is nothing to practise: answer it as you are.
Skills questionnaires, skills assessments and virtual assessment centres
Sova sells all three, plus Immerse, its AI role simulations. None publishes a construct list we could build a scorer against. Virtual assessment centres usually come later in the process, after the blended assessment, and Sova recommends against sitting them on a phone.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is the Sova assessment timed?
Usually there is no countdown on screen, and the test is still timed. Sova’s practitioner report says the tests "are not time-limited" but that "the time taken to make a response is recorded and taken into account in the score". The candidate version says your result is based on the number you got right and "how quickly you provided the correct answer". A countdown does exist as a feature an employer can switch on, so some deployments show one, but the default is a test that measures your pace without telling you it is doing so.
How many questions are in a Sova test?
Sova does not say, and neither should anyone else with confidence. Its own Early Careers bundle is 15 to 30 minutes in total. JobTestPrep puts a whole blended sitting at 50 to 80 questions in 25 to 30 minutes, Psychometric Success at "around 20 to 100 questions or more", and GraduatesFirst describes 15 numerical questions in the Bain deployment. PracticeAptitudeTests is the honest one: counts and timings vary by role level and by the version an employer licences.
What is the Bain Sova test?
Bain’s online test is widely reported to be built on Sova, in three sections: a personal or situational judgement section, logical reasoning and quantitative reasoning. Coaches on PrepLounge put the recommended completion time at around 40 minutes and say it is untimed in principle, while warning that going well past the benchmark is itself a negative signal because Sova measures processing speed as well as accuracy. All of that is candidate and coach reporting rather than anything Bain or Sova has published, and one source suggests verbal reasoning has been dropped from Bain’s version, so treat the section list as a guide rather than a guarantee.
Does Unilever use Sova?
Unilever appears on Sova’s own customer logo wall on sovaassessment.com, which is first-party and current. Which stage of the Unilever Future Leaders Programme is Sova is a separate and weaker claim: prep sites describe the online assessment as involving both a Sova assessment and a gamified HireVue stage, and neither company has published the pipeline. Prepare for the Sova sections and confirm the process with your recruiter.
Is the Sova personality questionnaire the same as the SHL OPQ?
No, though both are forced-choice. The OPQ32 gives you four statements and asks for the one most like you and the one least like you, leaving the middle two unranked. Sova gives you a row of statements and five columns from "Least like me" to "Most like me", one statement per column with no ties, so every statement is placed. Sova reports 18 traits built on the HEXACO model, in three groups, against the OPQ’s 32.
What is a Sova learnability test?
Sova describes it as measuring "how quickly a candidate can learn and apply new patterns and problem-solving rules", and sells it for early careers programmes. It is optional in the Early Careers bundle. Sova publishes nothing about the item format, so our version is built to the published construct rather than to a screenshot: a hidden rule you work out from feedback alone, which then changes without warning. What is scored is the rate of improvement, not the total correct.
Can I retake a Sova assessment?
The invitation link is single-purpose and expiring: Sova sells "Time-Limited Access. Links expire to prevent unauthorised retakes" as an anti-cheating feature. You can resume an interrupted sitting from the same link, but a retake is the employer’s decision, not something the platform offers.
Will I get feedback on my Sova assessment?
Sometimes, and it is the employer’s choice. Sova says that "if your prospective employer chooses, you will automatically receive specific and valuable feedback on the natural behaviours you demonstrated during the assessment upon completion". At Vodafone, Sova describes automatically generated reports using "gentle language" and including development activities. The candidate version of a Sova ability report contains no number at all: a band such as "in the average range", what it means for work, and a development suggestion.
Which countries use Sova?
Primarily the United Kingdom: Sova is a UK company registered in Kent and every live customer story on its site is a UK employer. Europe is real, with ten languages in the Vodafone deployment and a Polish reseller selling the ability tests and personality questionnaire. Australia and New Zealand are real but thinner: Sova has had an APAC managing director based in Australia since at least 2020 and has an ANZ customer story. The United States presence is the weakest of the four.
Companies That Use Sova Assessment
Sova replaces a staged screening process with one blended sitting, so the employers below use it at the first sift, immediately after application and before any human reads a CV. Every name here comes from Sova’s own customer stories or from the customer logo wall on sovaassessment.com, checked on 2026-09-12.
Vodafone
TelecommunicationsBlended assessment, AI-scored video interviews and virtual assessment centres. Sova reports 65,000 candidates assessed in six months across ten languages.
Nationwide Building Society
Banking & FinanceBlended online assessment covering personality, situational judgement and learnability, plus one-way video interviews and a digital assessment centre.
John Lewis Partnership
RetailSova assessment in Partner recruitment, described in Sova’s own customer story.
TUI
Travel & LeisureSova assessment across its talent strategy, per Sova’s own customer story.
Sky
Media & BroadcastingSova hiring journey used to strengthen the talent pipeline.
JCB
Manufacturing & EngineeringEarly careers hiring, from application through to offer.
Unilever
Consumer GoodsNamed on Sova’s current customer logo wall. Which stage of the Unilever Future Leaders Programme is Sova is reported by prep sites rather than confirmed by either company.
View Unilever guide →Experian
Data & AnalyticsNamed on Sova’s current customer logo wall. Products used are not specified.
Randstad
Recruitment & StaffingNamed on Sova’s current customer logo wall. Products used are not specified.
NEXT
RetailNamed on Sova’s current customer logo wall. Products used are not specified.
Bain & Company
Management ConsultingThe Bain online test is widely reported as Sova: three sections covering situational judgement, logical reasoning and quantitative reasoning, untimed in principle with a recommended 40 minutes. Reported by coaches and prep vendors, not confirmed by Bain or Sova.
Santander UK
Banking & FinanceA Sova-authored client story describes a blended assessment of cognitive ability and situational judgement questions replacing a two-stage process. The story dates to 2016 and Sova removed it from its own site after February 2022, so treat it as historical.
View Santander UK guide →Sova assessments are white labelled to the employer, so the invitation will usually carry the company’s branding rather than Sova’s. The giveaway is the domain: the candidate test player is at sovaonline.com. Employers change vendors and configure their own mix of sections, so confirm the current process for your role before preparing.
Practice by Test Type
Compare the same format across every provider that uses it, and see what each one is really measuring.
Numerical Reasoning Test Practice
Tables, charts, percentages and ratios against the clock. The most common screening test on graduate schemes and analyst roles.
Verbal Reasoning Test Practice
Short dense passages and true, false or cannot say answers. Judged on what the text supports, never on what you already know.
Logical Reasoning Test Practice
Shapes, sequences and flowcharts instead of words or numbers. Inductive, deductive, abstract, diagrammatic and spatial in one place.
Situational Judgement Test Practice
Realistic workplace scenarios scored against an employer competency framework. No maths, no time pressure, and a scoring key you can reason about.
Personality Test Practice for Job Applications
No right answers, which is exactly why they unsettle people. Learn the traits, the consistency checks and the formats before you sit one for real.
Ready to Start Practising?
Sign up for free to try 3 tests, or unlock all 7 Sova practice tests, from the reasoning sections to the 18-trait personality questionnaire, with unlimited practice sessions.