1. What the Professional Maturity Profile aims to do

Two people can hold the same job title and work in very different ways. One finishes the tasks they are given. The other sees the problem behind the task, brings the right people in and fixes it so it doesn't come back.

The Professional Maturity Profile shows you, in about 15 minutes:

• the level you work at in six areas that matter in almost every professional role, from Level 1 Foundation to Level 5 Strategic;
• your overall level, for example Level 4 — Advanced Professional;
• your strongest area and the one to develop next;
• what the next level looks like in practice, with three things to try.

It's free, and you can share your result. If you want a verified record of it, you can add a certificate to your LinkedIn profile.

2. What it is — and what it isn't

It is a situational judgement assessment: you read short work situations and choose what you would most likely do. Your choices are scored the same way for everyone.

It isn't:

• a measure of your job title or seniority. A level describes how you approach work situations. Someone without a management title can work at Level 4; a manager can work at Level 3.
• a test of technical knowledge in your profession.
• a personality, psychological or clinical test.
• an observed or 360° assessment. Nobody else rates you; the result comes from your own choices and how you describe yourself.
• a hiring, promotion or disciplinary tool. It isn't designed for decisions about other people, and shouldn't be used that way.

Answering as you really work gives you the most useful result. Every answer is something a capable professional might do, so there is no obvious "right" option to aim for — and nothing to win by guessing.

3. The research it rests on

Situational judgement tests (SJTs) predict how people perform at work. A review of the research combined 102 results from more than 10,000 people and found that SJTs predict job performance at a useful level, with an average corrected validity of .34 (McDaniel, Morgeson, Finnegan, Campion & Braverman, 2001). A later review found that SJTs most often measure leadership and interpersonal skills, and that those measuring teamwork and leadership predict overall job performance relatively well (Christian, Edwards & Bradley, 2010).

SJT scores rise with experience. Reviews of SJTs report that scores tend to increase with years of job experience (McDaniel & Nguyen, 2001). That is what you would expect of a measure of professional maturity, and it is one of the main ways we check the test (section 8).

The wording of the question matters. SJTs can ask "what would you most likely do?" or "what is the best thing to do?". The first leans more towards how people typically behave, the second more towards what they know; across many studies the choice made little difference to how well the test predicts performance (McDaniel, Hartman, Whetzel & Grubb, 2007). We use "What would you most likely do?" because this is a self-development tool about how you usually work, not a selection test.

Honest note: SJTs can be open to faking, practice and coaching (Lievens, Peeters & Schollaert, 2008). That is why every answer is written to be reasonable, why the questions rotate, why the wording of the answers is checked so it can't give the level away (section 6), and why retakes are limited.

Growing levels of work. The five levels draw on two ideas. Skill develops from following rules towards judging each situation as a whole (Dreyfus & Dreyfus, 1986). And higher levels of work involve longer time horizons — how far ahead a role must think and decide (Jaques, 1989). Honest note: researchers debate whether skill really grows in distinct stages, and our time horizons are inspired by Jaques' idea rather than his exact scale. We use the five levels as a practical, clearly defined ladder, and test whether people's levels behave as expected (section 8).

Competencies that matter at work. The six domains sit within the "Great Eight" framework of workplace competencies, which was tested across 29 validation studies with 4,861 people (Bartram, 2005).

4. The six domains

Strategy & planning

What it is: linking your work to goals, looking ahead, planning, setting priorities and adjusting plans when things change.
Why it matters: the further ahead a role has to plan and decide, the more complex the work (Jaques, 1989). Planning sits within the "Organising & Executing" competency (Bartram, 2005).

Financial sense

What it is: understanding cost and value, budgets, reading the numbers, and judging where money and effort give the best return.
Why it matters: commercial and financial understanding is part of the "Analysing & Interpreting" and "Enterprising & Performing" competencies (Bartram, 2005). You don't need to be an accountant — the scenarios are about judgement, not calculation.

Decision-making

What it is: framing the problem, using evidence, weighing options and risk, choosing the right moment and owning the decision.
Why it matters: people differ reliably in decision-making competence, and those who do better on decision tasks report better real-life decision outcomes, even allowing for general ability (Bruine de Bruin, Parker & Fischhoff, 2007).

Stakeholder management

What it is: knowing who matters and why, understanding what different people need, managing expectations and balancing competing interests.
Why it matters: managers give attention to stakeholders according to their power, legitimacy and urgency; recognising these is the starting point for managing relationships well (Mitchell, Agle & Wood, 1997).

Communication & influence

What it is: clear messages for the audience, persuading without authority, and handling difficult conversations.
Why it matters: a study of managers found that rational persuasion, inspirational appeals and consultation were the most effective ways to gain commitment from subordinates, peers and bosses (Yukl & Tracey, 1992).

Teamwork & collaboration

What it is: supporting colleagues, sharing work and credit, resolving conflict and working across teams.
Why it matters: teamwork rests on specific knowledge, skills and abilities — such as conflict resolution, collaborative problem solving and coordination — that can be learned (Stevens & Campion, 1994).

5. The five levels

Each level is defined by three things that grow together:

• scope — whose results you look after;
• time horizon — how far ahead you think;
• approach — how you handle the situation.

What each level looks like in each domain:

Every level has value. Many roles are done well at Level 2 or 3, and nobody works at Level 5 in everything.

6. How the scenarios work

Each attempt has 35 questions in six short steps, then a short "About you" step:

Five reasonable answers. In every situation, each of the five responses matches one of the five levels. All five are things a capable professional might sensibly do; they differ in scope, time horizon and approach — not in right and wrong. A Level 1 response is careful and safe, never foolish.

The wording can't give the level away. Before any question is used, we check in code that:

• the Level 5 answer is not usually the longest (or the shortest);
• no phrase or opening word — such as "my manager", "together" or "Ask whether…" — appears mostly at one level;
• simple tricks, like "always pick the answer that mentions the team", do no better than answering at random;
• a strategy learned from one part of the question bank, applied without reading the situation, cannot reach Level 4 in any domain.

Question bank 1: 72 situations; longest answer at Level 5 in 26% of situations; best single-rule trick 3.19 against 3.00 for random answers.

Why the questions change. Each attempt draws a different set of situations from the bank (12 per domain), avoiding the ones you saw in your last two attempts. Answers are shown in a different order every time.

7. How your levels are calculated

1. Each situation gives a level from 1 to 5 — the level of the response you chose.
2. Each domain gets a value from 1.0 to 5.0: 80% from the average of your four situations, 20% from your self-placement. The situations carry most of the weight because they show what you would do, not just how you see yourself.
3. Your domain level:

The top level is deliberately hard to reach: Level 5 needs mostly Level 5 choices in all four situations of a domain.

4. Your overall level comes from the average of your six domain values, using the same table — with one rule: it can't be more than one level above your lowest domain. If you are Level 5 in five domains and Level 1 in one, your overall level is 2. A professional's maturity is limited by their weakest area, and this rule stops one area being hidden by the others. Your results tell you when this rule applies, and which domain to raise.
5. Self-view note. If you placed yourself two or more levels above what your choices in the situations suggest, your results say so for that domain. It doesn't change the score beyond the 20% weight; it's there to make the result honest and useful.

We review the level boundaries as results come in. Once 500 people have completed the test, we'll set them from real results and show you a percentile — for example, "higher than 62% of professionals who took the test". Level 5 will stay rare.

Consistency. If your answers to the consistency check are very different, or you answer much faster than anyone could read the situations, you still get your full results, but that attempt can't be used for a certificate.

Your certificate shows your overall level and your six domain levels. It doesn't show the values behind them.

8. How we check the test

A test is only useful if it's consistent and measures what it claims to. We follow the International Test Commission and Association of Test Publishers Guidelines for Technology-Based Assessment (2022, updated 2025), and check the test in five ways.

1. Writing and review. Every situation was written against the level definitions, checked for the wording rules in section 6, and reviewed for clarity and fairness across countries and sectors.

2. Blind sort. Before launch, reviewers who had not seen the answer key put each situation's five responses in level order. Situations where they disagreed with the key were rewritten.

3. Checking the answer key with ratings. People who finish the test can choose to rate how mature each response to one or two situations is. Research shows that ratings from many working people closely match expert judgements — scoring keys from crowd ratings correlated .88 to .94 with expert keys, and 30–40 raters were often enough (Brown et al., 2021). We wait for at least 30 ratings before judging a situation. Where ratings disagree with our key, a review panel decides whether to keep it, change it or rewrite the situation — and records why.

72 situations: 0 confirmed by ratings, 0 changed, 72 still collecting ratings.

4. Statistics. Once enough people have taken the test, and every six months after that, we analyse anonymised answers to check:

• that levels rise with experience and responsibility — the most important check for a maturity test;
• that higher levels go with better self-rated work performance;
• that the situations in each domain agree with each other;
• that the six domains are related but distinct;
• that results stay stable when people retake the test a few weeks later;
• that every response is chosen by at least some people.

Situations that don't meet the standard are retired and replaced. Past results are never changed.

Results will be published once enough people have taken the test.

5. Norms. From 500 completed tests, level boundaries are set from real results and percentiles are added.

9. Your privacy

• We ask for your first name and email so we can send your results if you want them, keep track of your attempts, and issue any certificate.
• Your results are private. They become public only if you create a share link or a certificate, and those show your levels — never your answers, your "About you" answers or your email.
• Your employer can't see your results unless you share them.
• We use anonymised answers (no name, email or address) to check and improve the test.
• You can ask us to delete your data at any time: contact us.

10. References

• Bartram, D. (2005). The Great Eight competencies: A criterion-centric approach to validation. Journal of Applied Psychology, 90(6), 1185–1203. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.90.6.1185
• Brown, M. I., Grossenbacher, M. A., Martin-Raugh, M. P., Kochert, J., & Prewett, M. S. (2021). Can you crowdsource expertise? Comparing expert and crowd-based scoring keys for three situational judgment tests. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 29(3–4), 467–482. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijsa.12353
• Bruine de Bruin, W., Parker, A. M., & Fischhoff, B. (2007). Individual differences in adult decision-making competence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 92(5), 938–956. https://doi.org/10.1037/0022-3514.92.5.938
• Christian, M. S., Edwards, B. D., & Bradley, J. C. (2010). Situational judgment tests: Constructs assessed and a meta-analysis of their criterion-related validities. Personnel Psychology, 63(1), 83–117. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2009.01163.x
• Dreyfus, H. L., & Dreyfus, S. E. (1986). Mind over machine: The power of human intuition and expertise in the era of the computer. Free Press.
• International Test Commission & Association of Test Publishers (2022; updated July 2025). Guidelines for Technology-Based Assessment.
• Jaques, E. (1989). Requisite organization: The CEO's guide to creative structure and leadership. Cason Hall.
• Lievens, F., Peeters, H., & Schollaert, E. (2008). Situational judgment tests: A review of recent research. Personnel Review, 37(4), 426–441. https://doi.org/10.1108/00483480810877598
• McDaniel, M. A., Hartman, N. S., Whetzel, D. L., & Grubb, W. L., III (2007). Situational judgment tests, response instructions, and validity: A meta-analysis. Personnel Psychology, 60(1), 63–91. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6570.2007.00065.x
• McDaniel, M. A., Morgeson, F. P., Finnegan, E. B., Campion, M. A., & Braverman, E. P. (2001). Use of situational judgment tests to predict job performance: A clarification of the literature. Journal of Applied Psychology, 86(4), 730–740. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.86.4.730
• McDaniel, M. A., & Nguyen, N. T. (2001). Situational judgment tests: A review of practice and constructs assessed. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 9(1–2), 103–113. https://doi.org/10.1111/1468-2389.00167
• Mitchell, R. K., Agle, B. R., & Wood, D. J. (1997). Toward a theory of stakeholder identification and salience: Defining the principle of who and what really counts. Academy of Management Review, 22(4), 853–886. https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.1997.9711022105
• Stevens, M. J., & Campion, M. A. (1994). The knowledge, skill, and ability requirements for teamwork: Implications for human resource management. Journal of Management, 20(2), 503–530. https://doi.org/10.1016/0149-2063(94)90025-6
• Yukl, G., & Tracey, J. B. (1992). Consequences of influence tactics used with subordinates, peers, and the boss. Journal of Applied Psychology, 77(4), 525–535. https://doi.org/10.1037/0021-9010.77.4.525

11. Version history

The Professional Maturity Profile is developed by EunoiaData, part of Eunoia Consultants (Pvt) Ltd. Questions or feedback about the method: contact us.

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