Aptitude tests › Attention to detail
Attention to detail tests: how they work and how to prepare
Attention to detail tests, also called error-checking or checking tests, give you an original and a copy of something: a name, an account code, an amount, an address. You say whether they match, or find what changed. Employers use them for roles where small mistakes are costly, such as administration, finance, data entry and operations. There's nothing to know in advance. What makes them hard is that the slips are tiny and the clock is running.
What the questions look like
- Same or different? An original row and a copy: is the copy exact? Practise with same or different.
- Find the error. Point to the character in the copy that changed, or say there is none. Practise with tap the typo.
- Count the errors. A longer line or a short table, and how many differences it has. Practise with count the differences.
- Find the odd one out. Several lines that should match, one that doesn't. Practise with find the odd row.
The slips to look for
- Punctuation: a comma for a full stop, a colon for a semicolon, a bracket the wrong way round:
(rev. 2)and)rev. 2). - Look-alike characters: l for i, 1 for l, 0 for O, 5 for S, 8 for B, rn for m.
- Swapped neighbours: 4471 and 4741, or two letters of a name the other way round.
- A single digit changed in a date, an amount or a reference number.
The eye skips slips inside things it recognises: a familiar word, a name, a date. The attention to detail guide explains why, with the research, and gives a checking routine. Checking tests from named publishers: Korn Ferry and Talent Q.
How to prepare
- Stop reading, start comparing. Split each line into groups of three or four characters and compare one group at a time.
- Look at shapes, not meaning. Check the letters of a name, and every digit and mark of an amount, not what it says.
- Give punctuation its own look, and check the ends of fields, where slips are easy to skip once the start has matched.
- Settle your pace before the day. Find how fast you can go while staying accurate, and check whether the real test takes marks off for wrong answers.
Start now
All four checking games are free at every level, with no account needed. Each has four levels: rows get longer and the slips subtler as you go, and a wrong answer shows you where the slip was.