Then I have bad news for you.

Because the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal assessment is the most widely known assessment for measuring critical thinking skills and is most often used to select employees, therefore you will not find a practice test online.  In fact, if you've found a site that says it has the "real" questions to the Watson-Glaser, save your money...the site is a fraud.  We have a full-time team devoted to scouring the web to ensure that the questions in the assessment are not leaked.

The Watson-Glaser is a measure of cognitive ability, so there is really nothing you can do in a short period of time to practice the test and increase your scores anyway.  

The best way to prepare for the assessment is to clear plenty of time (at least 30-45 minutes), make sure your environment is free of distractions, and read all of the questions carefully.  

The assessment itself is made up of 40 questions and measures your skills in thinking, reasoning, and intelligence.  What you can expect are questions that measure your ability to understand:

• A strong versus weak argument
• Relevent versus irrelevant data
• Whether or not the conclusion follows from the data given
• Whether or not there is sufficient information to make a conclusion
• What assumptions were made

Requirements:

• 3 to 5 years experience in the field
• Strong interpersonal and communication skills
• Excellent analytical and decision-making abilities
• Ability to manage multiple tasks to completion within established deadlines
• Detail oriented

So how do companies realistically measure these competencies?

The first two are easy. Look at the candidate's resume and interview them.

Requirements 4 & 5 are harder to measure, but achievable. You can use a behavioral interview question such as “Describe a project that was very challenging but you successfully completed it on time. Also tell me how you tracked the project to keep everyone in sync.”

It’s the 3rd requirement that companies fail to measure well. And this is why so many management-level hires don’t work out in my opinion. There are many gifted programmers, accountants, salespeople and other individual contributors that can hide their decision making inabilities while focused on task execution. But when they’re asked to manage the task (or a budget), they underperform. Maybe they’re not comfortable analyzing data or they take too long to make a decision because they have trouble evaluating arguments and picking out the important points.

Participant feedback in our webcasts shows 9 out of 10 companies don’t have a way to assess or develop critical thinking and decision-making skills. This is a huge problem for growing companies that are constantly identifying high potential employees and slotting them into management roles.

So how do you know if someone is a good thinker? Have candidates take the Watson-Glaser critical thinking test and you’ll know how they make decisions. Can they see the facts within a controversial issue? Can they avoid showing personal bias when judging an idea or a conclusion?

If your favorite candidate doesn’t score well, but you still want to hire them, you can put them on a development plan with a Boot Camp or access to Critical Thinking University.

Identifying and developing better thinkers in your organization isn’t easy, but it’s easier than you may think.

While intellect is an undisputed asset in the workplace, the ability to apply brainpower to make well-reasoned judgments and draw accurate conclusions cannot be assumed. Most of us have had the experience of working with an incredibly bright individual who can regurgitate every morsel of learned knowledge or breeze through cognitive ability tests, and yet when confronted with a complex problem that requires careful and logical reasoning, their horsepower is rendered paralyzed.

How is that possible? The answer is simple; intellect is only one component of critical thinking. Although scores on the Watson-Glaser have a positive relationship with cognitive ability, the additional information obtained by measuring critical thinking provides insight into an individual’s ability to put brainpower into practice. Specifically, critical thinking involves:

• Attitudes that enhance one’s ability to recognize the existence of problems and an acceptance of the general need for evidence in support of what is asserted to be true.
• Knowledge of the nature of valid inferences, abstractions, and generalizations in which the weight or accuracy of different kinds of evidence are logically determined, and
• Skills in employing and applying the above attitudes and knowledge.

Here are six ways organizations can improve their performance with the Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal:

• Screen applicants for management positions. If you’re hiring a manager in any field or a C-level executive, they must be great thinkers first and foremost. This will save you money sifting through resumes and interviewing unqualified candidates that have great technical and people skills but lack the ability to make critical decisions or set a strategy.

• Predict performance. High Watson-Glaser scores correlate with good analysis and problem-solving skills, good judgment and decision-making, and good overall job performance. Critical thinking ability is more predictive of success than personality.

• Assess candidates for working virtually. Virtual workers make a lot of independent decisions and you want to make sure they are good at evaluating online information and accurately assessing situations without the advantage of being face to face.

• Know the abilities of your current workforce. Watson-Glaser scores can help you make promotion decisions, create development plans for high potentials, and see if a department has the make-up to tackle a new challenge.

• Hire better salespeople. Salespeople and customer service agents are entrusted with representing your company and products. Good critical thinkers are good at recommending the right product and thinking through all the issues before responding to customer complaints and questions.

• Become a thought-based organization. It may sound obvious, but you need to promote better thinking just like you promote honesty, hard work, and fiscal responsibility. Organizations that have good critical thinkers are laying the foundation for higher levels of innovation, problem solving, and creativity – the competencies that will help you create real value in your market.

Come to our booth and learn...

• How to make better management hires using the Watson-Glaser™ Critical Thinking Appraisal, the #1 critical thinking assessment
• How to increase your employees' critical thinking and problem solving skills with a subscription to Critical Thinking University, our new development portal
• About our new book, Now You're Thinking
• Why critical thinking drives problem solving, creativity, and other top competencies

We hope to see you there. See our floorplan location below....

http://itunes.apple.com/us/app/critical-thinking-university/id423986330?mt=8

The ‘Think-O-Meter’  app challenges your thinking and helps you develop a Sherlock Holmes-like attention to the evidence at hand. Think through dozens of scenarios and test your ability to separate reliable facts from assumptions, focus on the relevant information, and think critically to get the right answer.

Whether you want to see opportunities more clearly, simplify your life by side-stepping problems, or improve the caliber of your decisions, this tool will give you an edge while honing your decision-making skills.

Practice thinking critically with Think-O-Meter.

However, the types of questions being used by interviewers really caught my eye.  Here are a few examples from the article:

• “What did you play with as a child?”
• “If you could describe Hershey, Godiva and Dove chocolate as people, how would you describe them?”
• “What is the chance that at least two people were born on the same day of the week if there are three people in the room?”
• “If you walk into a liquor store to count the bottles unsold, but the clerk is screaming at you to leave, what do you do?

I'll be honest, if I received any of those interview questions, I would be very caught off-guard.  To some extent, that is the point.  Candidates today are so well-coached on the common questions like "Tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a co-worker" or "Where do you see yourself in 5 years?" that the answers rarely reflect the candidate themselves.  

But do these questions really get to the heart of critical thinking ability?  Given the fact that interview questions are notoriously unreliable  measures of ability, it is doubtful.  However, there is an easier solution.  Use an assessment.  

Not only is the Watson-Glaser II Critical Thinking Appraisal the gold standard for assessing critical thinking skills, but there is also an Interview Report that recruiters/interviewers can use to delve deeper into an individual's assessment results.  

You don't need to come up with silly questions or have someone role-play how to sell an imaginary pen.  Instead, use a psychometrically sound assessment that has a proven correlation with overall job success, occupational/educational attainment, and cognitive ability.

In the Watson Glaser Interview Report, interview questions are generated based on each individual's results on the Watson-Glaser assessment.  This creates a unique interview experience for each candidate.  In addition, the report uses a structured behavioral question format, additional probing questions, and scoring format to guide the interview.  

Which approach do you think would more accurately predict a strong critical thinker- the questions in the WSJ article or the results from the Watson-Glaser II plus Interview Report?

Now You're Thinking is designed to help you to make better life decisions by learning to become a more effective thinker. Whether you are considering refinancing your home, buying a new car, changing jobs or staring your own business, we teach you a new way of thinking. The first half of our book is a true story about excellent critical thinking wrapped in a heroic and heartwarming story.

You can pre-order on Amazon in March!

1) Qualify Your Leads

In the beginning, resist making assumptions about your leads. Have you not called a prospect because you heard they are struggling? Or you think they don't need your product? Keep an open mind and test out your theories. You might find just the opposite is true.

Get concrete information on the company, the decision maker, and their needs. Understand their criteria for making a purchase, and their timeline.(Evaluate Arguments/Information)

2) Discover Their Needs

Don’t assume you know what they need. Sometimes they’re not even sure. Instead, ask open-ended questions and you will begin to see their needs and possibly even uncover additional selling opportunities. (Recognize Assumptions)

Be careful not to evaluate a person’s needs too quickly. Sometimes in an effort to close a deal, we miss out on larger opportunities. Listen to all of the customer’s needs and then start the process of evaluating how your products can meet their needs. (Evaluate Arguments/Information)

3) Present a Solution

After carefully listening to the customer and confirming their desired outcomes/goals, it’s time to present a solution. Remember that customers ultimately spend money on things that help them do their jobs cheaper, better and/or faster. Use your critical thinking skills to find a solution that achieves this outcome. (Draw Conclusions)

4) Negotiate & Close

Your customer enters into a negotiation with their own assumptions, arguments and conclusions. Make it your goal to understand what those are by asking questions throughout the process. (Evaluate Information)

Listen to the conclusions that your customer has arrived at. (Evaluate Arguments/Information). Then, use the information that you have gathered to creatively guide them to a conclusion that fits with the solution you can offer. (Draw Conclusions)

Learn more about the RED model or read about our critical thinking training solutions.

Success in today’s tight economy is defined by making the right decisions, solving the problems that truly impede success, and anticipating the trends that are redefining the competitive landscape. The failures of AIG, Lehman Brothers, and General Motors are very public and painful reminders of what happens when people make poor decisions and management fails to consider all of the facets and implications of a decision. Organizations that attract, retain, and develop the best critical thinkers have a huge competitive advantage.

The Department of Labor identified critical thinking as the raw material that underlies fundamental workplace competencies, such as problem solving, decision making, planning, and risk management. Critical thinking is also rated the #1 skill of increasing importance over the next five years based on a national survey of employers. But how do you measure and increase it?

This session outlines how to systematically build critical thinking skills in an organization through selection, leadership development, high potential, and succession programs. Emphasis is placed on how to effectively measure critical thinking skills and increase capabilities.

Attendance is free - although you must first sign up for a free account on HR.com to gain access.

Here's the link:

http://www.hr.com/en/webcasts_events/webcasts/upcoming_webcasts/increasing-critical-thinking-in-the-workplace-the_ghs3mr78.html