Unlike other companies, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) have its own pre-employment tests that each aspiring applicant has to pass with flying colors in order to prove that they have what it takes to be an employee of theirs.
Considering that the company receives thousands, if not tens of thousands, of applications a year, it is important that they don’t hire someone that can ruin their operations or reputation.
This is where the PwC tests come into play.
While it may look simple on paper, many experienced applicants make it their goal to do their best and do a few laps on a mock PwC exam or practice on a similar PwC practice test in order to land job that they a want
It is not uncommon for applicants to practice and prepare for months in order to improve their chances of being hired, especially if they know that the competition for the position that they want is fierce.
Whether or not this is your first attempt at landing a job at PwC, here are a number of top tips that can help you pass the PwC exams with relative ease.
- Read up on the core values of PwC (Part 1)
When you are made to take the Career Valuation Test, you shouldn’t treat this as a simple situational judgement test of the PwC assessments.
In this type of exam, you will be given a situation containing a problem that a PwC employee encounters on a regular basis that you need to resolve by selecting which of the provided choices is the best and worst ones to take.
The situations will typically coincide with the job that you are applying for, like being put in the shoes of an accountant or consultant.
Although it is tempting to just select which answers seem the most terrible or sensible to pick when trying to resolve a situation, this is not advisable.
Why? Because you will be expected to act in a way that is fitting for a PwC employee for that position.
Yes, this means that apart from understanding the duties and responsibilities of your future job, you must also be able to act in a way that is conforming to the core values of PwC.
These can be seen on the company website, allowing you to read and study it at your own pace and have an idea on how to respond in the PwC Career Valuation Test.
- Read Up on the Core Values of PwC (Part 2)
Somewhere along the hiring process, you will be given the PwC Occupational Personality Questionnaire, which is the company’s personality test.
Like the first tip, you will need to try and present yourself as someone that is compatible with the values of the company so that they can be seen by its clients as a good representation of it no matter what their job is.
The Occupational Personality Questionnaire will come in the form of a survey-like format where you need to select how much you agree or disagree with a provided statement.
Although the ideal personality profile can vary from position to position, the rule of thumb is that they always conform to the traits included in the core values of PwC, allowing you to pattern your responses accordingly.
- Learn How to Read Tables, Graphs, and Other Data Charts Fast
The numerical reasoning test of the PwC assessments don’t just supply you with a formula or mathematical problem to solve.
Instead, you will need to read a paragraph-long passage to know the problem then look at the supplied infographic like a table, graph, balance sheet, or chart to find which values are needed to answer the question.
Since these tests are timed, it is very likely that you may not get enough points because you will have to sift through a lot of information provided in the infographic on top of needing to do the calculations mentally.
If the graph is a business financial statement, then it is important that you know how to read a balance sheet properly so that you can easily answer the question.
If you have an old college textbook that contains questions like these, then you can practice with them and even simulate the timed nature of the exam by making an alarm with your phone or tablet.
- Buy or Borrow Puzzle Books
In order to measure a person’s problem solving skills, the PwC assessment utilizes the logical reasoning exam.
Here, you will be presented with a set of shapes or diagrams and it will be your job to figure out the rule, sequence, or pattern that each of them follows so that you can select the correct one that fits the missing box.
Although there are many ways to prepare for this test, the best way to do this is to find puzzle books with pattern or sequence-finding questions because of how similar they are.
Sure, they may not be a 100% copy of what to expect in the actual exam, but these puzzle books contain the essence of the questions that you can encounter.
- Brush Up Your Deductive Reasoning Skills
If you were a fan of philosophy or logic classes back in college, then the verbal reasoning test will be a walk in the park.
Although some questions are your run-of-the-mill reading comprehension questions, some will instead have you decide whether a supplied statement or conclusion to the provided paragraph or passage is true, false, or uncertain.
Like the puzzle book tip that we previously mentioned, worksheets or books that can test your logic or deductive reasoning skills will come in handy because they follow the same idea.
*Photo by Sam Lion
