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HSBC Practice QuestionsWe look for graduates with good numerical and verbal reasoning skills and use SHL to
produce the tests that will assess your critical thinking abilities.
As a candidate, it is important to know about the selection process that you will be
experiencing. Our practice psychometric tests will give you the opportunity to get experience
in the type of questions you will encounter. They have been designed to introduce you to the
two types of aptitude tests that we use to assess graduates:
Verbal reasoning, where you need to evaluate the logic of given statements.
Numerical reasoning, where you need to analyse data from statistical tables.
In order to familiarise yourself with the type of questions that may be asked, read the instructions, and
work through the questions as quickly and accurately as you can, bearing in mind that the tests
themselves have time constraints.
Now see how you get on.Verbal Reasoning
Instructions
The verbal questions which follow are multiple choices. For each question, you are given several
possible answers. When you have selected your answer, you should tick in the appropriate circle.
In this test, you are given two passages, each of which is followed by several statements. Your task is
to evaluate the statements in the light of the information or opinions contained in the passage and to
select your answer according to the rules given below.
MARK CIRCLE A if the statement is patently TRUE or follows logically given the information or
opinions contained in the passage.
MARK CIRCLE B if the statement is patently UNTRUE or the opposite follows logically, given the
information or opinions contained in the passage.
MARK CIRCLE C if you CANNOT SAY whether the statement is true or untrue or follows logically
without further information.Passage 1:
The big economic difference between nuclear and fossil-fuelled power stations is that nuclear reactors
are more expensive to build and decommission, but cheaper to run. So disputes over the relative
efficiency of the two systems revolve not just around the prices of coal and uranium today and
tomorrow, but also around the way in which future income should be compared with current income.
1. The main difference between nuclear and fossil-fuelled power stations is an economic one.
A True B Untrue C Cannot Say
2. The price of coal is not relevant to discussions about the relative efficiency of nuclear reactors.
A True B Untrue C Cannot Say
3. If nuclear reactors were cheaper to build and decommission than fossil-fuelled power stations, they
would definitely have the economic advantage.
A True B Untrue C Cannot Say
Passage 2:
At any given moment we are being bombarded by physical and psychological stimuli competing for
our attention. Although our eyes are capable of handling more than 5 million bits of data per second,
our brains are capable of interpreting only about 500 bits per second. With similar disparities between
each of the other senses and the brain, it is easy to see that we must select the visual, auditory, or
tactile stimuli that we wish to compute at any specific time.
4. Physical stimuli usually win in the competition for our attention.
A True B Untrue C Cannot Say
5. The capacity of the human brain is sufficient to interpret nearly all the stimuli the senses can
register under optimum conditions.
A True B Untrue C Cannot Say
6. Eyes are able to cope with a greater input of information than ears.
A True B Untrue C Cannot SayNumerical Reasoning
In this test, you have to use facts and figures presented in statistical tables to answer the questions.
In each question, you are given either five or ten options from which to choose. One, and only one, of
the options is correct in each case. Note that for questions which have 10 options you may have to
tick in more than one circle to indicate your answer.Statistical Tables
Population Structure 1985
Population Live Births Deaths Percentage of population
at start of per 1000 per 1000 at start of year aged
year population population
(millions) (Jan-Dec) (Jan-Dec) under 15 60 or over
UK 56.6 13.3 11.8 19 21
France 55.2 13.9 10.0 21 19
Italy 57.1 10.1 9.5 19 19
Germany 61.0 9.6 11.5 15 20
Spain 38.6 12.1 7.7 23 17
Production of 15mm Buttons, July-December
Production in thousands
Total (standard & Standard quality
sub-standard) button production
button production
July 70 60
Aug 60 55
Sept 85 65
Oct 100 80
Nov 95 85
Dec 100 90
Sales price: Standard quality buttons £5.70 per 100
Sub-standard quality buttons £2.85 per 100Numerical Test – Questions
1. Which country had the highest number of people aged 60 or over at the start of 1985?
A B C D E
UK France Italy Germany Spain
2. What percentage of the total 15mm button production was classed as sub-standard in September?
A B C D E
10.5% 13% 15% 17.5% 20%
AB AC AD AE BC
23.5% 25% 27.5% 28% 30.5%
3. How many live births occurred in 1985 in Spain and Italy together (to the nearest 1000)?
A B C D E
104,000 840,000 1,044,000 8,400,000 10,440,000
4. What was the net effect on the UK population of the live birth and death rates in 1985?
A B C D E
Decrease of Increase of Increase of Increase of Cannot say
66,700 84,900 85,270 752,780
5. By how much did the total sales value of November’s button production vary from October’s?
A B C D E
£28.50 £142.50 £285.00 £427.50 No
(Decrease) (Decrease) (Increase) (Decrease) change
6. What was the loss in potential sales revenue attributable to the production of sub-standard (as
opposed to standard) buttons over the 6 month period?
A B C D E
£213.75 £427.50 £2,137.50 £2,280.00 £4,275.00The answers to the practice questions are:
Verbal Test
1 C
2 B
3 A
4 C
5 B
6 C
Numerical Test
1 D
2 AB
3 C
4 B
5 E
6 CDon’t be discouraged if you found the questions difficult: there are several things you can do to
improve your performance.
Verbal Tests:
Read newspapers, reports, business journals
Do verbal problem solving exercises, e.g. crosswords
Numerical Tests:
Read financial reports in newspapers
Study tables of data
Practice your mental arithmetic
These tests were designed to give you experience of the kind of test you may experience as part of
our recruitment process. The results will not form part of any selection process that you may
undertake with HSBC in the future.
