Ambulance Victoria tests and interview – Preparation 2024

If you are applying to join Ambulance Victoria as a Graduate Paramedic, you will be required as part of your application to take several assessment steps to measure your suitability:

Phase 1 - Ambulance Victoria's tests 

The Psychological screening phase includes two psychometric tests:

• A timed Emotional Intelligence test that includes 3 parts and has around 55 questions.
• A non-timed clinical behavioural assessment with 344 questions which offers a profile of you based on 22 personality scales.

Phase 2 - Psychological interview

A 1-on-1 interview with an AV representative or a psychologist.

What is Ambulance Victoria’s Emotional Intelligence test?

As part of your selection with Ambulance Victoria you will be asked to complete a timed emotional intelligence test, which includes 3 parts with 55 forced-choice questions. The test takes around 20 minutes to complete.

The Emotional Intelligence test measures your emotional reasoning based on two types of test questions:

Type 1: test questions that ask you to identify emotions based on facial expressions. These include a list of typical emotions: sadness, happiness, anger, surprise, concern, contempt, afraid and neutral. In this type of test questions you are shown photos of faces and you are asked to quickly identify what is the emotion based on the facial expression.

Type 2: test questions that ask you to identify a correct emotion based on a behavioural scenario. Each scenario has a description of a behaviour or an incident that leads to a certain emotion. Your task is to identify the correct emotion and then to identify the face expression that express this emotion.

Please review the following example of an emotional intelligence test question:

Is this Surprise?

Here you need to analyse the facial expression to identify the correct emotion. Facial expressions can be analysed using the eyebrows, eyes, cheeks, nose and lips. Each emotion has a distinctive international expression.

Our 1-on-1 coaching for your timed emotional intelligence test

• Delivered by expert psychometric test tutors
• Face to face or via Skype video.
• Includes special material for the Emotional Intelligence test and a full Practice Emotional Intelligence test.
• Includes an analysis of your weaknesses.
• Working with you to ensure you demonstrate your full potential and capabilities in your Emotional Intelligence test.
• From our experience you need a 2 hours session to be ready for your emotional intelligence test.

What is Ambulance Victoria’s Behavioural Assessment test?

Ambulance Victoria uses a personality test that analyses 22 different personality scales about you to come up with your profile and identify areas of risk that will prevent you from becoming a member of Ambulance Victoria. For example, if you are someone who does not have a strong emotional resilience or you lie taking risks you will be taken out of the recruitment process.

The personality test includes 344 test questions which are not timed and each questions includes a statement and you are asked to state to what extend you believe each statement is true (from strongly agree to strongly disagree). The 22 scales measure:

• Clinical scales provide critical diagnostic features of 11 important clinical constructs. These 11 scales may be divided into three broad classes of disorders: those within the neurotic spectrum, those within the psychotic spectrum, and those associated with behaviour disorder or impulse control problems.
• additional five scales include two indicators of potential for harm to self or others, two measures of your environmental circumstances, and one indicator of your motivation for treatment.
• Interpersonal scales provide information regarding your relationships and interactions. Interpersonal style is assessed along two dimensions: a warmly affiliative versus a cold rejecting style, and a dominating/controlling versus a meekly submissive style.
• Two scales assess pathology. The Borderline Features scale is the only scale that has four subscales, reflecting the factorial complexity of the construct. The Antisocial Features scale includes three subscales: one assessing antisocial behaviours and the other two assessing antisocial traits.
• Critical Items form alerts to issues that require immediate attention. The personality test report lists 27 items (distributed across nine content areas) that suggest behaviour or psychopathology that may demand immediate attention. They are identified as critical based on two criteria: indications of a potential crisis situation and a very low endorsement rate in normal individuals.

Please note: Ambulance Victoria's personality test is NOT similar to the type of personality tests used by other employers in Australia, as it measures personality disorders and other unique personality aspects.

Why, contrary to what you are being told, personality test questions have right answers

One of the most common mistakes that we tend to hear is that the personality test has no right or wrong answers therefore, there is little need to prepare for your personality test. Unfortunately, this leads many good applicants to end up with an unsuitable profile which blocks them from moving forward with their recruitment to the bank. It is true that contrary to a cognitive test question that might ask you how much is 4 plus 6, the style of personality test questions is such that there is no right or wrong answer, however, this does not mean that there is only one correct way to answer your personality test questions to get a suitable profile at the end of the test. Therefore, preparing for your personality test and understanding how to answer the personality test questions is critical to ensuring that you get a suitable profile at the end of your test.

Please note: our free personality test is not similar to the one used by Ambulance Victoria, as it measures very different aspects of your personality.

Our 1-on-1 coaching for your Ambulance Victoria clinical behavioural assessment:

• Delivered by expert psychometricians.
• Face to face or via Skype live.
• Includes special material for your personality test.
• Includes an analysis of your profile.
• Working with you to ensure you demonstrate your full potential and capabilities in your clinical personality test.
• From our experience you need between 2 and 3 hours to be ready for your behavioural assessment with AV.

1-on-1 coaching for your interview with Ambulance Victoria:

• Delivered by expert psychometricians.
• Face to face or via Skype live.
• Working with you to ensure you demonstrate your full potential and capabilities in your interview.
• Real time interview simulations and feedback.
• From our experience you need between 1 or 2 hours to be ready for your interview with AV.

Here are some of our success stories preparing for AV's tests and interview:

I’m excited to inform you that I was successful and have progressed to the reference check stage of recruitment!! 

Iain (applied for a position with Ambulance Victoria)

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I was so disappointed not passing the exam for the third time. But now I finally understand why I did not pass the personality test with AV.

Jessica (applied for a position with Ambulance Victoria)

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Just letting you know I passed my psychometric test for Ambulance Victoria. Thanks for clarifying the test structure and questioning technique.  I also appreciate your advice regarding consideration of other peoples situation and point of view.  These are important factors.

David (applied for a position with Ambulance Victoria)

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I passed my assessment for AV and, thank goodness for your guidance as I had a much better understanding of what was being asked. 

R (applied for AV)

Start preparing for Ambulance Victoria Assessment Centre & Psychological Screening