hey everyone welcome back to the channel i feel like it's been a while since i've done a kind
of informational video uh where i've just been talking and giving advice for aspiring solicitors
i think a lot of my content recently has been vlogs and showing an insight into my
life so i'm kind of happy that i'm going back to that informational side of things and today
we're going to be talking about the situational judgement test so as you know your girl loves a
little bit of structure so firstly i'm going to define what situational judgment tests are i'm
going to refer to them as SJTs for the rest of this video because i'm lazy the second part of
the video is where i'm going to be talking about my experiences with the situational judgment test
just so you gain an idea of the structure and the different types of questions you could be asked
then i'm going to go on to how you can prepare for situational judgment tests and then lastly
we'll be talking about how to perform at your best while you're actually in the test itself firstly
let's actually define what an SJTs is so let's break down that name situational obviously refers
to the whole kind of situation element you'll be presented with a scenario or a particular
situation and this is most likely going to be a situation that you can get in the workplace
or something that you would come across in your day-to-day life as a potential trainee solicitor
so the judgment part of that name essentially tests how you would react to those situations
that arise now let's move on to my experiences with the situational judgement test so
i believe my first SJT was actually in some kind of video game structure so what you would do is
you'd enter this virtual portal and then you'd act like you were walking through the office of the
firm and while you're walking you'll come across certain tasks or you have to do certain things
like it's as if you're spending a day in the life in their office so as the video game progresses
the day goes on so you're going from the morning to lunchtime to the afternoon
to even like the social in the evening and as i mentioned along the way as you progress
throughout the day you are faced with certain situations or scenarios so they could be things
like you've entered a client meeting at 2pm and you are aware that the associate in your
team is giving information that may not be correct what would you do in that situation
so in that situation for example you don't want to undermine your associate in front of the client
so one option they could give you in that scenario is that you offer to take a five minute break
so then you're able to discuss that with your associate outside of the room another situation
that you could come across during the day is the supervisor has given you a task you have no idea
where to start how to complete it you're really confused what would you do in that situation and
usually in the sjt when that scenario or situation arises usually you get around three to four
multiple choice questions underneath now these multiple choice questions can differ slightly
they may ask you okay pick the option that you're most likely to do out of these options so then
you would select the one that you're most likely to do conversely you can get the option of which
of these options would you least likely to do and sometimes they may mix and match those questions
so do read the question carefully sometimes i may ask for most likely sometimes they may ask
for least likely or conversely you could be given those multiple choice options again so one to four
and they ask you to label okay which one are you most likely to do you'd label that as one uh the
one that you are kind of close to do but you may not do as much as the other one you'd label that
too and the one that you're least likely to do you'll label that as four so essentially
you're ranking the different options up so one to four or you could even be like one to five one
to six it depends on the firm and you know how their structure is like because i do feel like
firms have different situational judgment tests that they tailor to their organization so a lot of
what i'm saying is from a very generalized point of view another SJT that i've come across is you
are in a kind of virtual portal again it's as if you are the trainee solicitor logging in for
the day and you check your inbox and in that inbox there is a list of emails so some of these emails
are things like signing up for a social or one email maybe marked as urgent you have to complete
this straight away that kind of thing so you are essentially expected to put in order which emails
would you reply to first and which ones would you save for last so obviously using common sense here
with the example that i've used what the one that says urgent you're more likely to do that
one first compared to the one about the social which can afford to wait for a couple of hours
or a couple of days now other forms of situational judgment that can arise throughout the application
process is actually in the interview itself so you may actually find yourself in an interview
scenario where an individual is interviewing you and giving you scenario-based questions
so they are essentially saying okay imagine you are a trainee of this firm this has happened this
has happened how would you react what would you do so those are the kind of questions that you can
get later on in the application process as well of course that eliminates the whole multiple choice
aspect of it because you were actually expected to give a whole rounded answer about what you
would most likely do why would you do it and how would you ensure that your situation is solved
one example of one that i had i think i may have talked about this in one of my old videos
actually about i think it was the video on the most difficult interview questions i've ever
had if it is i'll tag it up in the cards above and essentially i was asked an ethical question
of say if you've accidentally read the other side's letter and it really benefits your
client but it was actually information that you weren't supposed to gain what would you
do in that situation and i knew nothing about the SRA code of conduct at that moment so i actually
answered that scenario-based question wrong i remember the the interviewer he raised his
eyes like okay what you're saying is completely unethical right now i thought basically it was
in the client's best interests to read the letter and use it obviously you're not allowed to do that
so i was obviously acting unethically there but it just goes to show that you can get situations come
up from the whole range of the legal field not only in the workplace but also your ethics so this
ties in really nicely into how to prepare for SJTs i would say first of all it's really important
to memorize and familiarize yourself with the firm's culture and values there are different
ways of finding out about the firm's culture and what they believe in what their ethos is
now the first way involves going on to the firm's website go on the firm's website and
usually sometimes they may actually spell it out to you on their website within the career section
okay this is the five qualities that we are looking for in a trainee solicitor or sometimes
they may not have that as obviously stated on their website so what you can do instead is look
at the section like who we are and essentially in that section you can pick out key words so say if
they use things like forward thinking or we are innovative or we are hard working individuals then
that gives you an idea as to what kind of people they take on and what kind of qualities they look
for in their future talent so by understanding a firm's culture you get a little bit of an idea
about what they're looking for in candidates and this is something that you can bear in mind when
doing the SJT for example say if they're looking for trainees who take initiative you can keep
that in mind when you're doing the SJT because there may be certain multiple choice questions
that allow you to show that you are also someone who would take initiative in a certain scenario
another way in which you can prepare is honestly generally just try and think of situations that
have happened to you in the workplace however you reacted to it of course everyone's had positives
and negatives no matter where they've worked and it's really important to think about those general
circumstances that do arise when you are working also try and think about those situations that can
come up for solicitors directly so this is what i'm talking about here in terms of the SRA code
of conduct this is what i'm talking about in terms of client contact let me give you a couple of more
examples say if you're talking to a client and they really don't understand what you're saying
what would you do in that situation how would you react or if you're working on a project in a team
and you realize that there's a new way of doing something some of the multiple choice question
options could come up and in terms of don't do nothing in that scenario the team don't want to
hear your opinions obviously that's something that you would least likely do or you can say
something in that situation like contribute to the team and make sure that your voice is heard
or you can say shout over everyone and make sure that everyone hears your idea of course that's
also something that you're least likely to do in that situation so obviously i think when it comes
to answering these questions sometimes like the example that i've given it's good to give that
middle ground all that balance you don't want to be that person who doesn't do anything who's
really kind of inactive but you also don't want to be that person who takes control and you know just
acts really dominant and aggressive in a situation another common sjt question that i've come across
quite often is you're in a situation where you're managing multiple deadlines and a partner comes in
and they just said sim i needed to drop everything right now we're going to court that kind of thing
so when you are spaced in situations like that what would you do and here is when say if the firm
values things like teamwork that's when you can really show your team working skills here and show
that you can rely on your other team members to maybe do some of the tasks or delegate some of the
opportunities if they're looking for leadership skills delegation comes within that as well
because you're able to organize tasks around tell people to do certain things that match up
to their strengths or their expertise so again just giving you a bit of a flavor as to what you
could be tested on as mentioned before please do look at the SRA code of conduct it tells you a lot
about things like how to act with integrity how to deal with confidentiality or disclosing documents
or information to clients and i think those situations they tend to be a little bit tricky
for individuals who may not have done the LPC and they are doing an SJT test so i would really look
into things like that as well because i do get a few questions that come up in SJTs that are based
on the ethical perspective as well and of course the next thing about how to prepare i think you
guys are going to be doing this anyway is googling and researching practice tests that are out there
and i think it's really important to not only limit yourself to say legal questions that could
come up or legal SJTs if you do search for just general workplace situational judgment questions
it may not be specifically linked to the legal field however i think it gives you a general
idea as to just professional life in an SJT you're not going to be faced with scenarios that you come
across very often so if you're doing general SJT practice just knowing and familiarizing yourself
with certain questions that could come up from a general perspective you're still giving yourself
that element of surprise and allowing yourself to think about how you'd react in certain situations
so don't try and limit yourself to just finding out practice questions for the legal field
i'm sure there are others out there that are just about working in the workplace in general
now the last section i'd like to talk about is how to perform at your best in the SJT itself
now i cannot stress enough how important it is to be honest in your SJT it may seem very tempting to
act like someone you're not but one thing that i've definitely come to realize is everyone has
some kind of assumption of what corporate law or corporate lawyer looks like and the times when
i've tried to act like that ideal that i think firms are looking for i am never successful
and then there was a moment in the process where i've decided to just be my authentic self and
that's when i started seeing a lot more success getting through to the next stage etc etc and
a lot of the time say if the SJT doesn't go well and you acted like your natural self that can be
a blessing in disguise because it just goes to show that yourself and the culture of the firm
may not match and i think it's very very important to have that alignment in values and goals with
your employer with your organization that you're working for on the flip side if you
decide okay i don't want to act like myself here i'm going to act like this corporate individual
you may actually get rejected because they didn't like that image that you created of yourself
and they would have maybe actually preferred that you be your natural self so i always urge
on the side of just trying to stay as honest as i could when answering these questions
because the worst thing would be is in a multiple choice question taking an option
and actually thinking oh you know what i don't think i'd actually do this but i think that's
what they want to see in me so i'm going to take that i don't know that doesn't really sit well
with me so do try and avoid that aspect also time management is so key in the situational judgement
test usually when i was in the test itself they had a timer in the corner of the screen anyway
but if they don't i think it's really important to understand how many questions you're going to be
asked how long you have to do it so you're able to time how long you're going to spend per question
is it going to be two minutes per question or what so try and figure that out before you sit the test
time management is really key because the worst thing is is you find a question really hard and
you spend ages on it and then the questions that come afterwards they're easier than the ones
before but you just spend so much time on the hard question that you lost marks on the easier
ones that you were most certain of so yeah try and be strict with yourself with the timings i think
is very important another thing i did in SJTs was i kept a bullet point post-it note in front of me
very brief on all the qualities and culture that the firm had what they promoted what
they believed in albeit this is something that i didn't want to kind of affect my performance
it was just nice to keep that there just to kind of keep in my mind essentially that this is what
the firm is looking for and it just acted as a bit of a reminder in that sense as well now if
you are in a kind of situational scenario based interview so this is further on in the process
one way in which i try to answer those questions of imagine you are in our real estate department
and you've been given loads of work kind of things so when you are answering questions in the actual
interview itself it really helps to link the situation back to an experience that you've had
so for example say if you are given that question of okay you're in our real estate department and
you're absolutely snowed in with work and someone else has come in and given you some more work to
do which is absolutely urgent what would you do it's really important in my opinion this is
something that i did quite often is i linked the situation all my actions that i would do
so one of the actions i'll do is reorganize my to-do list i would flag up or try and push back
on any deadlines to my supervisor or any any other person who's assigned me work so i would
link those kind of actions back to things i've done it before in the past when i may have been
in a similar situation where i've had conflicting deadlines or i've been under pressure to complete
work really fast and it doesn't have to be a legal example it can be non-legal it can be personal for
example you were managing loads of uni deadlines as well as your society commitments the reason
why i did that in terms of linking the action back to a time when i also did a similar thing
in the past i think it just added credibility to my answer it showed genuineness it showed
the interviewer that i had been in that kind of situation before and this is how i handled it this
is how i learned from the situation and this is how then i'm going to transfer it to the situation
and then ultimately it's what i would do if i was a trainee solicitor at your firm
so yeah i think that's what i would say in terms of situational judgment tests and
briefly talked about scenario-based interviews today as well if you liked today's video please
do like comment subscribe yeah thank you so much for watching i'll see you all in the
next video i've got a big one planned for my next video actually so hopefully if all
goes well that will go up next week and yeah until then see you all soon have a lovely week