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The first time I heard of SJTs, I remember feeling so overwhelmed and scared of what it would be like. After having done them, I feel like it’s not really that stressful.
Now, don’t get me wrong these tests can be really confusing because sometimes all the answers look the same. However, in all honesty, I feel like the reason behind the Situational Judgement Tests is to be able to understand what you would do in pressured and stressful situations. So, the best way to do it, is to actually think about the situation, how would you deal with it?
Let’s go a step back, what are SJTs?
Situational Judgement Tests (SJTs) are tests that employers use during their recruitment stage. These tests are meant to assess someone’s decision-making and judgement when given a work-like situation. In the oriel SJT tests, these situations are followed by a number of possible answers and you either:
Have to rank from the most appropriate to the least appropriate
Pick the 3 most appropriate answers (in no order)
This is how the test goes: you have 52 scenarios and 104 minutes to complete them, meaning 2 minutes per scenario.
Marking
The way that this is marked is:
Ranking questions – This is where you rank 5 possible answers in terms of appropriateness and for each correct answer you get 4 points equalling 20 marks per question. However, even if you get a wrong combination, you still get marks for it, and therefore: the closer you are to the correct answer the higher the mark you get. (Check out the lase pharmacy student zone for more on marking)
3 most appropriate - for each correct answer you get 4 points which totals up to 12 marks
Resources I used
To be honest, I feel like nothing can really prepare you 100% for your SJTs. You can see a pattern in the questions and situations the more questions you do, but when you do your actual test, you feel like none of that really mattered.
One of the best resources would be the foundation training pharmacist professional attributes, which they are actually assessing you. Spend some time looking at this, because when you’re answering the questions, you’ll be able to recall these. The lase pharmacy student zone comes up with a practice paper that you can use to practice too!
I also used the pharmacy situational judgement test book which is available to purchase online. This resource was also useful in allowing me to do the questions and mark them as well as look at the rationales for the set of answers.
To conclude, these resources are best to be used as practice and not really memorised because the questions may not be 100% the same.
Be sure to check out my Instagram @pharma_cister to see more of an insight into the oriel process and my journey through MPharm
Next post: SJT: My experience and tips!