Barclays Online Assessment

Barclays' early-careers screen runs on SHL and it is NOT a multiple-choice test: the instructions page says 'rather than presenting you with a set of response options from which to choose, we've created an activity-based test that allows you to drag, drop, and interact with our questions'. It is 8 questions in 12 minutes, English (US), in the Barclays-branded SHL shell. The captured sitting mixes three families: numerical items where you arrange a stacked bar chart or resize a pie chart from a short data panel, logical scheduling items where you tap calendar dates or drag procedures onto a timetable under availability and buffer constraints, and inductive items where you tap regions to fill the next shape in a sequence or drag a line through coded nodes in the right order. An untimed SHL values-and-mindset questionnaire (forced-choice statement triads) usually accompanies it. Everything here is candidate-reported: the sitting was captured screen by screen with the candidate's selections visible, and every answer in our timed replica was recomputed independently - two of the captured selections were wrong and are graded with the computed answer, with the discrepancy explained in the solution.

Practice this OA interactively → Barclays interview questions Full Barclays interview guide

Early careers (all tracks) — SHL interactive cognitive test

SHL interactive cognitive testSHL interactive (drag, drop, tap, arrange)8 questions / 12 min shown2026 -> 2027

One timed set: 8 activity-based questions in 12 minutes. The captured sitting runs a stacked-bar-chart arrangement (customer complaints, percent changes per category), a presentation calendar with five ordering constraints, a medical-procedures timetable with MRI run-over buffers, a five-pointed-star fill sequence, a drag-the-line code chain, an employee-tenure pie chart, a meeting-availability calendar with two trap constraints, and a divided-square fill sequence. Our timed replica below reproduces every question with its data and figure; because drag-and-drop cannot be hosted in the player, each interaction is asked as a choice or typed answer whose correct option is the exact arrangement you would build on the real screen.

Barclays OA — FAQ

What is the Barclays online assessment?

Barclays' early-careers screen runs on SHL and it is NOT a multiple-choice test: the instructions page says 'rather than presenting you with a set of response options from which to choose, we've created an activity-based test that allows you to drag, drop, and interact with our questions'. It is 8 questions in 12 minutes, English (US), in the Barclays-branded SHL shell. The captured sitting mixes three families: numerical items where you arrange a stacked bar chart or resize a pie chart from a short data panel, logical scheduling items where you tap calendar dates or drag procedures onto a timetable under availability and buffer constraints, and inductive items where you tap regions to fill the next shape in a sequence or drag a line through coded nodes in the right order. An untimed SHL values-and-mindset questionnaire (forced-choice statement triads) usually accompanies it. Everything here is candidate-reported: the sitting was captured screen by screen with the candidate's selections visible, and every answer in our timed replica was recomputed independently - two of the captured selections were wrong and are graded with the computed answer, with the discrepancy explained in the solution.

What is the format of the Barclays OA?

It runs as 1 track (SHL interactive cognitive test). Early careers (all tracks) — each timed, auto-graded where applicable.

How do I practice for the Barclays online assessment?

Work the sample questions above (each with a full worked solution), then take the interactive Barclays OA practice on QuantVault. For the full interview, see the Barclays interview-questions set.