SHL Sample Test Questions and Answers (With Explanations)

SHL is an assessment publisher, and employers choose which of its tests to send you. That is why searching for "the" SHL sample test is slightly misleading: there is no single exam. What you receive depends on the role. A graduate finance program might send numerical and inductive reasoning; a sales or customer-facing role might send a situational judgment test and a personality questionnaire; a technical role might add deductive reasoning or a calculation test.

What stays constant is the style. Questions are multiple choice, answered on screen, under a visible countdown, and designed so that almost nobody finishes with time to spare. The tests are measuring how quickly and accurately you reason with unfamiliar information, not how much you remember from school. The samples in this guide mirror those formats. They are original practice items written for this site, not real SHL questions, which are confidential and which no honest prep provider can legally reproduce.

Numerical reasoning questions give you business data and ask for one calculated answer. The math itself is rarely beyond middle school: percentages, percentage change, ratios, averages and currency conversion. The difficulty is extracting the right numbers quickly and not falling for a plausible-looking distractor. Use this table for Questions 1 and 2.

Question 1: Which region grew fastest?

Which region had the highest percentage revenue growth from 2023 to 2024? Options: North America, Europe, Asia, or all grew by the same amount.

Answer: Asia (25%). Percentage change is (new − old) ÷ old. North America: 42 ÷ 420 = 10%. Europe: −31 ÷ 310 = −10% (a decline). Asia: 45 ÷ 180 = 25%. The trap is choosing North America because it had the largest absolute increase in some readings of the table, or the largest overall figure. Always divide by the starting value.

Question 2: What share of 2024 revenue came from Europe?

Answer: approximately 29%. Total 2024 revenue is 462 + 279 + 225 = 966. Europe's share is 279 ÷ 966 ≈ 0.289, or 28.9%. Estimating helps here: 966 is close to 1,000, and 279 is close to 280, so the answer must be just under 29%. If your options are 24%, 29%, 31% and 35%, estimation alone is enough.

Question 3: Working backward from a discount

A laptop costs $84 after a 20% discount. What was the original price? Answer: $105. After a 20% discount you pay 80% of the original price, so original = 84 ÷ 0.80 = 105. The classic wrong answer is $100.80, which comes from adding 20% to $84. That error is built into the options on purpose, because the discount applies to the original price, not the sale price.

Verbal reasoning tests present a short passage followed by statements you classify as True, False or Cannot Say. The single most important rule is that you must judge each statement using only the passage, never your own knowledge or common sense. A statement can be completely true in the real world and still be "Cannot Say" because the passage does not establish it.

Statement B shows how verbal tests mix in arithmetic and exact wording. "Fewer than" and "no more than" are not the same, and one word can flip an answer. Statement C is the standard Cannot Say trap: the passage is silent on the future, and your job is not to predict it.

On a real test you will usually have a longer passage and have to locate the relevant sentence quickly. Practice scanning for the key noun in each statement, find where the passage discusses it, and read only that sentence closely before committing to an answer.

Inductive reasoning tests are the most visual SHL format. You see a sequence of abstract figures and must work out the underlying rules, then apply them to find the missing or next item. Because there is no text to lean on, many candidates find them the most unsettling at first, yet the rules are consistently drawn from a small set: movement, rotation, color change, counting and alternation.

Here is a described sample. A square contains a single dot, and the square alternates between black and white. The dot moves around the corners of the square.

Answer: a white square with the dot at the top right. There are two independent rules running at once. Color alternates every step (period 2), and the dot moves one corner clockwise every step (period 4). Step 5 repeats step 1 because the combined pattern repeats every four steps, so step 6 repeats step 2. Notice that the two cycles have different lengths, which is exactly what makes harder items tricky: if you only tracked the color, you would find two candidate answers.

Deductive reasoning asks what must be true if the information you are given is true. It is closer to formal logic than the other tests: you apply rules to premises and accept only conclusions that are guaranteed. Anything merely probable, or which needs an extra assumption, does not follow. The verdict is a strict yes or no.

Premises: All project managers on the team are certified. No certified staff work part-time. Maria is a project manager on the team. Another colleague, Leo, is an engineer on the team who works on a contract basis.

The third conclusion is the most common stumbling block. "All A are B" does not mean "all B are A". Candidates who read quickly flip the statement in their heads. When you meet a conclusion that sounds sensible, ask whether you could build a scenario where the premises hold but the conclusion fails. If you can, it does not follow.

A second quick sample: "Some engineers are contractors. All contractors are paid hourly." Does it follow that some engineers are paid hourly? Yes. At least one engineer is a contractor, and every contractor is paid hourly, so that engineer is paid hourly. Does it follow that all engineers are paid hourly? No, because only some engineers are contractors.

Two other formats deserve a mention because employers pair them with the reasoning tests. A calculation test strips the context away and asks short arithmetic questions under tight time pressure. It rewards fluency with fractions, percentages and mental math. A situational judgment test (SJT) describes a workplace dilemma and asks you to choose the most and least effective responses. It is closer to a personality and values measure than an ability test.

The difficulty is not complexity but volume. You may have only a short time to answer a long run of items, so doubling your speed at these basics produces a bigger score gain than learning advanced techniques.

Situational judgment sample

You are working on a team project and notice that a colleague has submitted figures that appear to contain an error. The deadline is tomorrow. What is the most effective response? Options typically include: (a) correct the figures yourself without telling anyone, (b) raise it privately with the colleague and offer to check the numbers together, (c) tell your manager immediately, or (d) leave it, since it is the colleague's responsibility.

Most employers would see (b) as the strongest response: it is direct, respectful and fixes the problem before the deadline. Option (a) bypasses the colleague, (c) escalates before trying a simple conversation, and (d) ignores a risk to the team's result. Scoring is based on what each employer defines as effective behavior for the role, so there is rarely a universal answer key. The reasoning pattern above, however, holds across most SJTs: communicate directly, protect the outcome, and escalate only when needed.

Sample questions are most useful when they are used diagnostically rather than as a reading exercise. Working through an answer you have already seen explained teaches you much less than attempting a question cold, being wrong, and then understanding why. The following approach works for most candidates.

• Attempt before you read. Cover the explanation, set a timer and answer. Review only afterward.
• Log every miss by cause. Was it a misread number, a formula gap, a time-out or a trap you fell for? Patterns in the log tell you what to train.
• Add time pressure gradually. Start untimed to learn the method, then move to the real time per question as soon as your accuracy is stable.
• Practice the format, not just the content. Using on-screen tools such as a calculator, scrolling a table or flagging a question to return to is part of the skill.
• Take a full-length mock before the real test. Endurance and pacing across a whole battery are different from single-question accuracy.