Communication (Intermediate) Test
The Communication (Intermediate) Test shows you how a candidate communicates when the stakes are professional: briefing executives, steering meetings back on track, delivering bad news to clients, and keeping cross-team threads productive. Twenty situational judgment scenarios measure written, verbal, stakeholder, and listening skills at the level real jobs demand.
Summary of the Communication (Intermediate) Test
The Communication (Intermediate) Test shows you how a candidate communicates when the stakes are professional: briefing executives, steering meetings back on track, delivering bad news to clients, and keeping cross-team threads productive. Twenty situational judgment scenarios measure written, verbal, stakeholder, and listening skills at the level real jobs demand.
4 dimensions, scored separately
Written communication
How clearly and appropriately a person writes for executives, clients, and cross-team audiences under real constraints.
Verbal & meeting communication
How effectively a person speaks up, presents, and steers meetings when time is short and stakes are real.
Interpersonal & stakeholder communication
How well a person manages disagreement, bad news, and competing interests with senior stakeholders and clients.
Nonverbal cues & active listening
How well a person reads unspoken signals, checks understanding, and listens before responding.
Everything about the Communication (Intermediate) Test
01What is the Communication (Intermediate) Test?
Most communication assessments stop at grammar and basic email etiquette. This test starts where those end. It presents 20 original scenarios drawn from mid-career work: a status update executives will skim on their phones, a senior stakeholder proposing an impossible date, a client call where the words say yes but the tone says no. The wrong answers are deliberately tempting, over-hedging, over-escalating, or staying silently compliant, so scores separate practiced communicators from merely adequate ones. There are four dimensions, each scored on its own band.
02How does the Communication (Intermediate) Test work?
Candidates work through 20 short scenarios, five per dimension, each with four response options. The strongest response earns 2 points, acceptable responses earn 1, and weak responses earn 0. Dimension scores run 0-10 and the overall score runs 0-40, with each dimension banded as developing, solid, or strong. Most candidates finish in about 10 minutes.
03Why is the Communication (Intermediate) Test important to employers?
At intermediate seniority, communication failures are rarely about grammar. They are about a risk buried in paragraph four, a meeting that never reached its decision, a client who heard spin instead of facts, or a hesitation nobody noticed until the deal died. Candidates who score well here need less managerial cleanup, escalate the right things at the right time, and keep clients and cross-functional partners confident. Pair the results with role-specific skills tests and a structured interview.
How to interpret Communication (Intermediate) Test results
Every candidate report scores each dimension separately. Here is what high and lower scores typically look like at work, and how to use them in your hiring decision.
Written communication
High scorers: Writes for the reader, not the record. Leads with what matters, keeps bad news visible without drama, and turns chaotic threads into decisions. Trust them with executive updates and client-facing messages.
Lower scorers: Tends to bury the lede, soften inconvenient facts, or write for completeness instead of clarity. Review their stakeholder-facing writing before it ships and coach them on structuring for skim readers.
Verbal & meeting communication
High scorers: Reads the room and adjusts in real time. Redirects derailed meetings without bruising egos, reprioritizes a briefing on the fly, and corrects the record diplomatically. A safe pair of hands in front of leadership and clients.
Lower scorers: May cling to prepared material, let dominant voices hijack agendas, or stay silent when the record needs correcting. Give them lower-stakes facilitation reps and a debrief partner before high-visibility meetings.
Interpersonal & stakeholder communication
High scorers: Handles disagreement with seniors, bad news to clients, and competing team interests with candor and tact together. Neither silently compliant nor needlessly combative. Suits roles at the intersection of teams or accounts.
Lower scorers: May default to silent compliance with authority, premature escalation, or picking a side instead of brokering one. Pair them with a strong relationship owner and coach on raising hard truths early and privately.
Nonverbal cues & active listening
High scorers: Notices when words and signals diverge: the flat yes, the crossed arms, the colleague being talked over. Checks understanding before acting, which prevents dead deals and misread commitments. Valuable in sales, research, and negotiation.
Lower scorers: Tends to take words at face value and push for explicit answers when the real message is in the hesitation. Coach them to slow down, ask open questions, and verify commitment through behavior, not just statements.
What job roles can you hire with the Communication (Intermediate) Test?
- Account managers: delivering bad news, reading client hesitation, and protecting relationships under pressure
- Team leads: running decision meetings, giving honest updates upward, and handling disagreement with senior stakeholders
- Project coordinators: keeping multi-team threads coherent and negotiating deadlines between competing groups
- Consultants: adapting one message for executives, engineers, and clients without losing accuracy
- Client-facing engineers: translating technical constraints and tradeoffs into language non-technical stakeholders can act on
Build a multi-measure assessment: tests to pair with the Communication (Intermediate) Test
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Frequently asked questions
Last updated July 31, 2026