Pre-Employment Tests for Shipping and Logistics Roles
Five kinds of test, what each one tells you about a shipping candidate, and how to combine them without wasting anyone's afternoon.
A pre-employment test for shipping roles should answer one question a resume cannot: can this person do the work on day one? Most generic hiring tests were built for retail, sales or graduate schemes, and they say little about whether someone can read a charter party, balance a disbursement account or write a clear delay notice to a principal. This guide lists the five kinds of test worth running for shipping and logistics hires, what each one actually tells you, and where each one falls short.
How we chose these tests
A test earns a place on this list only if it meets four conditions.
- It measures something the resume cannot. Claims of experience are already on the CV. A test has to add evidence.
- It fits the job. A port agency executive and a voyage accountant need different questions, even if both sit in “operations”.
- It is fair to candidates. Every candidate sees the same difficulty, under the same time limits, with the same rules.
- It can be read in minutes. A test that produces a forty-page report nobody opens is a cost, not a tool.
We built the assessment side of Marine Ideas around these conditions, so the examples below come from how those exams are put together.
1. Domain knowledge test
What it is. Questions on the actual work: laytime and demurrage, bills of lading, port agency procedures, voyage accounting, chartering, documentation. In Marine Ideas this section is drawn from a maritime question bank of more than 59,000 questions, filtered to the skills listed in your job description.
Who it suits. Every shore-side shipping role. This is the section that separates someone who has done the job from someone who has read the job title.
Example. For a dry bulk operations role, a candidate might be asked to work out laytime used when a vessel tenders notice of readiness on a Saturday afternoon under a charter that excludes weekends. A person who has done it answers in a minute. A person who has not cannot fake it.
Limitation. A domain test rewards knowledge of standard practice. It will not show whether someone knows your company’s own systems, and it should not try to.
The question mix is deliberate. Most questions are single-answer multiple choice, with smaller shares of multiple-answer questions, fill in the blank and short written answers. Written answers are graded against a marking rubric stored with each question.
2. Aptitude test
What it is. Quantitative reasoning, logical reasoning, data interpretation and basic numerical ability. The questions lean on maritime context where it fits, such as voyage distances, cargo weights, watch schedules and bunker calculations, but general reasoning questions are fine too. All aptitude questions are multiple choice.
Who it suits. Roles with heavy numbers or scheduling: voyage accounting, chartering support, freight pricing, planning.
Example. A data interpretation question gives a small table of bunker consumption by speed and asks which speed meets an arrival window at the lowest fuel cost. Everything needed is in the question.
Limitation. Aptitude predicts how quickly someone learns, not what they already know. Use it alongside the domain section, never instead of it. For senior roles, a high domain score matters more than a high aptitude score.
3. Language test
What it is. Grammar, vocabulary, sentence correction and short reading comprehension in English, calibrated to roughly IELTS band 5 to 7, with maritime vocabulary where it fits.
Who it suits. Any role that writes to principals, agents, charterers or authorities, which in shipping is most of them. English is the working language of the industry, and the IMO’s STCW Convention treats the ability to use it as part of competence for many seagoing functions.
Example. A sentence correction item takes a garbled line from a delay notice and asks for the version a principal would read once and understand.
Limitation. A written test measures written English. It says little about spoken fluency or how someone handles a tense phone call with a terminal. If speaking matters for the role, add an interview step that tests it.
4. Behavioural and emotional intelligence test
What it is. Situational judgement questions, plus questions mapped to the five commonly used emotional intelligence domains: self-awareness, self-regulation, motivation, empathy and social skills. Candidates choose how they would handle a realistic work situation.
Who it suits. Customer-facing and coordinating roles, such as agency, customer service, crewing and team leads. These are jobs where the hard part is often the people, not the paperwork.
Example. A vessel is delayed, the principal is angry, and the terminal blames your agency. Which reply do you send first, and to whom?
Limitation. Candidates can guess the “nice” answer. Good situational questions make every option look reasonable, so the choice reveals priorities rather than politeness. Even so, treat this section as a guide to interview questions, not a verdict on character.
5. Verified skill certifications
What it is. Not a test you set, but one the candidate has already passed. A skill certification is a proctored exam in a single skill group, with a certificate anyone can verify online through a QR code or link.
Who it suits. High-volume hiring, where you want evidence before you invest an hour in a custom exam. It also suits candidates who want to stand out before they are invited to anything.
Example. Two shortlisted candidates for a freight forwarding role both claim documentation experience. One has a verified certification in that skill group. That is a fact you can check in ten seconds, not a claim.
Limitation. A certification covers one skill group, not the whole job, and it is a snapshot from the day it was taken. Our guide to verifiable digital certificates for maritime skills explains exactly what one does and does not prove.
Summary: which test tells you what
| Test | Tells you | Does not tell you | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|
| Domain knowledge | Whether they know the work | Fit with your systems | Every shipping role |
| Aptitude | How fast they reason with numbers and logic | What they already know | Numbers-heavy roles |
| Language | Written English accuracy | Spoken fluency | Roles that write to outsiders |
| Behavioural and EI | Priorities under pressure | True character | Customer-facing roles |
| Verified certification | Tested knowledge in one area | Breadth or recency | High-volume screening |
How to build a pre-employment test for a shipping role
Combining sections is where most companies go wrong. Either the test is so long that good candidates drop out, or it is so short that it measures nothing. Here is how we recommend setting it up.
Decide the weight first. Start from the job, not the test. For a voyage accountant, domain and aptitude might take most of the exam. For a port agency executive, domain and language might lead, with a behavioural section. In Marine Ideas you set the total number of questions and the share of each section, and each section gets its own time limit.
Keep sections in a fixed order with their own clocks. Candidates take one section at a time, and the next unlocks only when the current one is finished. That stops a candidate spending forty minutes on the part they are good at and rushing the rest. Answers are saved as they go, so a dropped connection does not cost anyone their progress.
Proctor lightly but consistently. Periodic webcam snapshots compared against a locked reference photo, plus a count of tab switches, give you integrity signals without a human invigilator. Recruiters see the signals next to the score. Candidates are not shown their own counts.
Read the breakdown, not just the total. Two candidates on 72% can be very different people. One aced the domain and struggled with language. The other did the opposite. The scoreboard shows scores by subject and by skill, along with pass rates and the score spread across all candidates for the job.
Decide your retake policy before anyone asks. Candidates have bad days. Marine Ideas lets candidates request a retake, which you approve or decline, so the decision stays with you and every candidate is treated the same way.
Mistakes we see most often
Testing what the resume already shows. Asking a ten-year chartering manager to prove they know what a fixture is wastes their time and yours. Pitch the domain section at the level of the role.
One test for every role. A single “operations test” across liner, feeder and NVOCC roles measures the overlap between them, which is the least important part of each job.
Using the test as the decision. A test is evidence. Combine it with the resume and a conversation. Our walkthrough of how AI resume screening works for maritime roles covers the step before the test, and how an AI voice interview works covers the step after.
Not telling candidates. Say in the job description that there is a test, roughly how long it takes, and what it covers. Serious candidates prepare. Others drop out, which saves you both time.
Run one on your next vacancy
The quickest way to judge a pre-employment test is to run it on a role you know well and compare the results with your own view of the candidates. Try Marine Ideas free. No credit card is required.