Business judgment test: Pre-employment screening assessment to hire the best candidates

Summary of the Business judgment test

This business judgment test evaluates a candidate’s ability to make the right trade-offs and decisions in a business context. This test will help you hire business executives and strategy consultants with a good nose for value.

Covered skills

  • Strategy & innovation

  • Sales & marketing

  • Performance improvement, org, finance, and mergers & acquisitions

Use the Business judgment test to hire

Candidates for roles that require strong business judgment such as strategy consultants, business executives, private equity associates, and analysts.

Type

Situational judgment

Time

10 min

Languages

English, Spanish, French, Italian, Japanese, Dutch, Portuguese

Level

Advanced

About the Business judgment test

Executives and strategy consultants are constantly involved in decision making that can make or break a business. A sustainable competitive advantage can only be attained by those who consistently make the right judgment calls in the face of uncertainty. Whether those judgments involve the company strategy, a business plan, or trade-off within performance improvement projects, there is value at stake in all of them.

This test evaluates candidates' judgment in the areas of corporate and portfolio strategy, innovation, cost transformation, digital transformation, procurement, supply chain, organization, operating model, behavior change, mergers and acquisitions, corporate finance, sales, pricing, customer segmentation, value propositions, go-to-market, and customer experience.

The scenarios are framed in such a way that not only experienced professionals but also recent graduates can demonstrate their judgment ability; knowledge of concepts, frameworks, or theories will not help candidates perform any better.

This screening test will help you identify candidates with the ability to make the right judgment calls in difficult business contexts to improve the competitive position of the company.

The test is made by a subject-matter expert

Otto V.

Otto worked at Bain & Company for 13 years and served as a Partner in Bain's Amsterdam office. He specializes in customer strategy and marketing, growth strategies, and change management. He supported mainly retail banks, telecom companies, and agrifood businesses. Otto has been involved in recruiting throughout his career and led Bain's Associate Recruiting department for a number of years. He is one of TestGorilla's co-founders, focusing on test development, product, and technology.

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TestGorilla’s tests are created by subject matter experts. We assess potential subject-matter experts based on their knowledge, ability, and reputation. Before being published, each test is peer-reviewed by another expert, then calibrated using hundreds of test takers with relevant experience in the subject. Our feedback mechanisms and unique algorithms allow our subject-matter experts to constantly improve their tests.

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The Business judgment test will be included in a PDF report along with the other tests from your assessment. You can easily download and share this report with colleagues and candidates.

Business judgment test

Why good judgment is key for any business

Good decision-making is the basis for any profitable business. This is especially the case in today’s market, where businesses have countless options for launching products in diverse markets or pivoting towards different kinds of products or services.

That’s why businesses hire executives and strategy consultants – they conduct careful analysis and projections to ensure that the company makes good decisions based on the available data. They know that decisions make or break a business. That’s why you need to be extremely careful when hiring for these roles since they impact your organization significantly.

But it’s not enough to have someone who’s great at making sound business judgments – they also need to have other qualities if they’re going to be the right candidate.

The right candidate

The strongest candidate will have a set of soft skills that accompany their business judgment skills:

Communication skills: The right candidate will know how to communicate their ideas clearly, concisely, and professionally. They will be working with multiple stakeholders, so they need to know how to communicate with diverse people and roles. Additionally, if they take up a leadership role, they will need to communicate the company’s decisions to a large number of employees to make sure they remain engaged and motivated.

• Leadership skills: Candidates taking the Business Judgment test will likely be applying for some kind of leadership role in the organization. As such, they need leadership skills – the ability to motivate people to work for a defined goal, support (and properly rewarding) employees, ensure that expectations are met and rules followed, and lead business operations to accomplish the company’s mission and vision.

• Working under pressure: Making good business decisions requires patience and understanding of a person’s (and the business’s) position. There will be a lot of pressure put on those candidates, but they need to stay calm and collected to ensure they make the best possible decision even under intense pressure.Analytical mindset. Making quick decisions without accurate or sufficient data is a surefire way to make mistakes. The right candidate will have an analytical mindset, ensuring they have the necessary information to make a well-informed decision.

Business judgment test

The importance of the Business Judgment test

The Business Judgment test will help you evaluate your candidates to see if they have what it takes to make the right judgment calls. The test itself disregards knowledge of concepts or frameworks – so a recent graduate can do just as well as an experienced business leader on the test.

The Business Judgment test will evaluate candidates in the following areas:

Portfolio strategy Innovation Cost transformation Digital transformation Procurement Supply chain Organization Operating model Behavior change Mergers and acquisitions Corporate finance Sales Pricing Customer segmentation Value proposition Customer experience

A candidate who scores well on the test will generally be experienced and skilled enough to make sound judgments to drive forward your business.

Business judgment test

Here’s how the Business Judgment test helps your recruitment

You should always give your applicants a pre-employment test when hiring for a role that requires strategy and innovation, sales and marketing, merger and acquisitions, or performance improvement and organization. The most common roles that require the above-mentioned skills are strategy consultants, business executives, analysts, and private equity associates.

A pre-employment test will help you in three ways:

1. It creates a bias-free hiring process

CV screening can lead to unconscious biases creeping into hiring decisions. A hiring manager reviewing hundreds of resumes won’t be able to dedicate enough time to every candidate, so there will be some false positives as well as some excellent candidates who get declined. The Business Judgment test avoids this issue – you invite every candidate to take the test and simply wait for the results. Candidates are judged only according to their abilities (test results), and each applicant gets an equal opportunity to prove their skills, creating a bias-free hiring process.

2. It provides objective scores

All candidates do the same test with the same questions, and your hiring manager receives quantifiable (numerical) test results. Therefore, you can easily compare the candidates to see who performed better. Those who scored higher than others should go forward in the recruitment process since they demonstrated sound business judgment and a good sense of strategy and innovation.

3. It’s simple, easy to use, and scalable

A hiring manager can send our pre-employment tests with a single click. Not only is it easy to use, but it makes no difference to the hiring manager if there are 20 or 220 applicants – so you can assess as wide a talent pool as you like.

Use the Business Judgment test to hire the best business executives and strategy consultants

The Business Judgment test will help you evaluate your candidates' ability to make decisions in business contexts that will propel your organization forward. It is the ideal test for hiring strategy consultants or business executives.

To hire the right strategy consultant or business executive, you should use a pre-employment test like our Business Judgment test. It’s bias-free, objective, and easy to use, and you can be confident that the successful candidate will offer your business sound judgment and decision-making.

FAQs

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