Employers will often give multiple choice tests to employees or prospective employees to assess their knowledge of important job tasks. For example, employers might give a test on an employee manual, a training session or a new procedure. They often use these scores to assess what additional training needs to be done or to assure that employees are up-to-date on policies and procedures important to the company. Besides studying, there are strategies for taking a multiple choice test.

General Test Taking Tips

Read and study the information your employer provides for you to prepare for the test. If you are being tested on a new manual, then read and study it. Make notes of any questions you have, and consult with a supervisor about the answers.

Read the directions on the test carefully. Some multiple choice tests allow you to choose more than one answer for each question, while some only have one correct answer.

Answer the easier questions on your first read through. These are the questions that you know immediately without thinking about them.

Go back through the test a second time to answer the harder questions. These are the questions that you may need to spend more time on to choose the correct answer.

Check over your answers if time allows. It is easy to accidentally mark a wrong answer on a multiple choice test or to forget one entirely.

Multiple Choice Test Strategies

Cover the multiple choice answers on your employer's test, and read the question only. Try to answer the question without looking at the answer choices. Then read the answers and choose the one that best fits your original answer.

Eliminate answer choices that are ridiculous. Usually, multiple choice test questions will have one or two answers that do not make sense with the question. You do not need to consider these as possible answers.

Watch out for questions that have the choices "all of the above" or "none of the above." These are often difficult to answer. If you know that at least two of the answers are correct, then most likely you can choose "all of the above," especially if there's only one correct answer per question. For "none of the above," if several of the answers seem wrong, then this is probably the choice.