Four sections, two hours, one shot — the GSK Digital Assessment evaluates your reasoning, personality, and fit with GSK's culture in a single proctored session.
The GSK Digital Assessment is GSK’s online assessment for early career candidates.
It replaced the previous World of GSK assessment and is now built around SHL’s testing platform, bringing together a personality questionnaire, a cognitive ability test, a values-based questionnaire, and a video interview in one 2 hours session.
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The GSK Assessment is a combined behavioural and cognitive assessment delivered through the SHL platform.
It consists of 4 stages that evaluate your work preferences, personality, cognitive ability, and communication skills. Click each section name to read more about it.
Getting Ahead Together: A short information page that introduces you to GSK and the assessment before you begin.
Thriving at GSK: A quick values-based questionnaire where you answer Yes/No questions about how you like to work.
Show Us How You Work: The main Skills Assessment, which combines a behavioral and a cognitive section.
Video Interview A recorded video interview using SHL’s platform.
The assessment is centered around one main screen with three tiles – one for each of the first three sections. The video interview will be opened immediately after completing the Show Us How You Work section.
Each tile unlocks only after you’ve completed the previous one, so you’ll work through the assessment one section at a time.
Here’s an illustration of the main screen (not the actual assessment):
Proctoring
The assessment is remotely proctored. You are not required to open a webcam or a microphone, but they will be monitored, and the system will detect attempts to copy, paste, print, or screenshot content.
Use a desktop or laptop with a webcam and a microphone – mobile devices are not compatible.
Use the latest version of Chrome, Firefox, or Microsoft Edge.
Find a quiet space where you won’t be interrupted, especially for the video interview.
Test Invitation
Oftentimes, you will receive the test invitation immediately after submitting your application through the GSK Carrers portal.
At the same time, you will receive an additional invitation via email.
Both invitations link to SHL’s testing platform – TalentCentral, where the assessment will be conducted.
Thriving at GSK
“Thriving at GSK” is a 5-minute values-based questionnaire, labeled as “our ways of working”.
This section is officially not a part of the assessment or the hiring process, and is aimed at helping you (but likely, GSK as well) understand what type of work you are more naturally inclined to.
There are 12 questions total – 4 scenarios, each followed by 3 yes/no questions about your work preferences and behaviors. These can revolve around multiple subjects, like:
Planning and prioritizing
Teamwork
Adapting to change
Pushing through setbacks
The test is untimed.
At the end, you’ll receive personalised feedback highlighting your strengths and development areas, regardless of your application outcome.
(Illustration)
Show Us How You Work
This is the main section of the assessment, labeled as “skills assessment” and consists of two parts:
Behavioral – measures your personality profile through a variation of a well-established assessment known as OPQ32.
The official model of the OPQ measures 32 traits across 3 areas: relationships, thinking style, and emotions.
GSK uses your responses to build a picture of your working style and compare it against the skills they’re looking for the specific role.
The questionnaire contains 76 questions, where each is a set of 3 statements.
Step #1 – choose the statement that best reflects you at work.
Step #2 – repeat for the two remaining statements.
This format is known as “forced-choice”, because it “forces” you to prioritize your personality traits, and hence expose your weaknesses.
Here’s an example:
I explain this question, as well as others, in the free SHL OPQ32 sample test, which you may find here.
Pro Tip
The desired profile in the SHL OPQ test highly depends on the job you want, so stay consistent with your answers. The forced-choice format is designed to reveal your real priorities, so if you keep switching between different ‘versions’ of yourself, it will show.
A few things to know:
You can go back and change your most recent answer, but not any earlier ones.
You may notice some statements appear more than once. This is intentional – just answer each one fresh without trying to match what you said before.
Not every statement will feel directly relevant to your experience. Pick the one that describes you best from what’s available.
The Cognitive Section (SHL General Ability)
The cognitive part of the GSK Skills Assessment is the SHL Verify G+ test, also known as SHL General Ability test. Note that the original Verify test has two versions – multiple-choice and Interactive.
You’ll be taking the interactive version. DO NOT prepare for the multiple-choice version.
The test lasts 36 minutes and contains 24 questions in 3 topics: numerical, inductive, and deductive. Below I show one question type of each topic. For solutions and more questions, see the SHL full guide.
Topic #1 – Numerical
You’ll be given tables, charts, and graphs and asked to interpret the data and draw conclusions. The focus is on understanding what the numbers mean, not just calculating them. A calculator is allowed, so use it.
Topic #2 – Inductive
You’ll see sequences of abstract shapes and need to work out and apply the rules and patterns they follow. These test your ability to spot patterns in new information without any prior knowledge.
Topic #3 – Deductive
You’ll be given a set of rules or conditions and asked to apply them to reach a conclusion. These questions often involve ranking or organising items, such as scheduling tasks or placing people in order based on given constraints.
Full Disclosure: I am affiliated with JobTestPrep. Clicking the links helps me provide you with high-quality, ad-free content.
Video Interview
After finishing the Skills Assessment, you’ll move on to a recorded video interview using SHL’s Smart Interview On Demand platform.
There’s no live interviewer – you record your answers to pre-recorded questions in your own time, on your own device.
You’ll typically be asked 3-5 questions. For each, you get up to 2 minutes to prepare before you need to start recording, and then up to 2–3 minutes to give your answer. You have 2 attempts per question, so if the first take doesn’t feel right, you can try again.
GSK Interview Question Types
You may encounter 2 types of questions:
SHL standard questions – These come from SHL’s library and tend to focus on your motivations, past experience, and transferable skills. They’re competency-based questions, similar to what you’d expect in a standard first-round interview.
GSK-specific questions – These are written by GSK and focus on your interest in the company, what you’d bring to the role, and how you see yourself fitting into their culture.
Here are a couple of samples:
What excites you most about the potential to work with our team?
What aspects of our company culture resonate most with you, and why?
How do you see yourself contributing to GSK’s goals and mission?
Pro Tip
Use your preparation time to structure your answer, not just to settle your nerves.
For competency questions, a simple situation–action–result structure works well.
For GSK-specific questions, do your research beforehand– know what GSK actually does, what their pipeline looks like, and what their stated values mean to you in practice.
Scoring
After completing the assessment, you’ll receive a personalised Skills Insight Report summarizing your score.
The report will not reveal correct/incorrect answers, neither will it divulge your likelihood of advancing to the next stage. However, if your profile is a close match to the “ideal candidate” profile, you likely will advance.
The report covers 10 areas in total:
9 behavioural traits drawn from your OPQ responses
Cognitive Reasoning based on your performance on the General Ability test, benchmarked against other early-career candidates globally. This result is not reviewed in isolation.
The 9 behavioral traits measured in the GSK Skills Assessment are:
Innovative Thinking – generating creative approaches and solutions to problems.
Decision Making – gathering the right input and data to make effective, timely decisions.
Establish Collaborative Relations – building positive, cooperative relationships to support shared goals.
Evaluate and Manage Risk – identifying and mitigating risks to support sustainable outcomes.
Resilience – navigating uncertainty and adversity with perspective and a positive mindset.
Communication – speaking clearly, reading your audience, and adjusting your style accordingly.
Applying Expertise & Technology – applying functional knowledge and using job-related technology effectively.
Each area is rated on a five-point scale from “unlikely to be a strength” to “likely to be a strength”, and the report includes a specific development action for each skill to support your professional growth.
Preparation
For the GSK Digital Assessment you basically need a prep course that covers the SHL Verify (General Ability) and OPQ tests. While a variety of SHL test preparation are available online, I strongly recommend JobTestPrep’s SHL Tests Prep Course.
Below I give you all the reasons why this is the ONLY prep course you should choose. All screenshots are taken from the preparation.
Full Disclosure: I am affiliated with JobTestPrep. Clicking the links helps me provide you with high-quality, ad-free content.
Tailored Prep for the Personality Section
The SHL Personality Questionnaire (OPQ32) is the first step of the GSK Skills Assessment, and is likely more important to your score than the cognitive one.
JobTestPrep’s SHL preparation is the only one that follows the actual test’s 3-statements structure and provides job-based recommendations and tips for success.
Tailored for the Actual Cognitive Assessment
The JobTestPrep SHL Preparation is the only one specifically tailored for the Interactive SHL test version used by GSK.
All other prep resources currently offer only the multiple-choice version – which is COMPLETELY different and will provide poor preparation for the interactive test.
Additional Practice by Topic
JobTestPrep’s SHL prep course offers additional practice tests by topic, so you can focus on your weak areas, even with little prep time available.
If you are serious about preparing for the your SHL test, start your preparation with JobTestPrep today.
