Where decisions are tested

Game-based assessments

The most direct descendants of the research tasks are commercial game batteries. They take the classic laboratory tasks, wrap them in a short, friendly interface, and record every choice you make.

The pymetrics battery

The best-documented example is pymetrics, which the assessment company Harver acquired in 2022. Two public sources describe how it works.

In 2017 Business Insider described Unilever's graduate hiring. Candidates submitted a LinkedIn profile, then spent about 20 minutes on 12 pymetrics games. The risk game gave them three minutes to collect as much money as possible by pumping balloons at 5 cents a pump and cashing in before a burst. Unilever had strong employees in each role complete the games first and used their results as the benchmark for new candidates. Those whose results matched the profile moved to a recorded video interview and then to a day at a Unilever office, where a manager made the final call. The process ran in 68 countries and 15 languages across 250,000 applicants.

A 2021 audit, co-written by Northeastern University computer scientists and pymetrics staff, fills in the model. For each client role, the game data of 50 to 100 high-performing incumbents forms an "in group". A model learns what separates them from a large baseline of other users, is checked for adverse impact on gender and ethnic groups, and then scores applicants on how closely they resemble the in group.

Candidate preparation sites describe the individual games. According to JobTestPrep, the set includes a Balloon game, two Money Exchange games (one a trust game in which money you send is tripled and the other person decides what to return, the other a sharing game in which you decide how much of an extra sum to give away), and a Cards game with four decks. That is the same family as all four games on this shelf. Treat these descriptions as candidate-reported: vendors update their batteries, and the exact rules may differ from what the prep sites show.

Prep sites and candidate forums also name BCG and JPMorgan among pymetrics users. We could not confirm those from the companies' own pages, so we list them here as candidate-reported only.

Other vendors

Arctic Shores, another game-based assessment provider, is described by prep sites as including a Balloons game and an Energy game in which you learn which generators add power and which drain it, a close cousin of the card task. Again, these are candidate-reported descriptions rather than vendor documentation.

The pattern across vendors is consistent: a balloon-style risk task, a learn-the-odds task, and at least one exchange of money with another party. If you meet any of them, the skills on this shelf apply directly.

In India

Hindustan Unilever is the clearest Indian example. Its Early Careers India page for the 2026 Foundation School lays out the stages: an application reviewed on academics and experience (with CAT or XAT scores for B-school applicants and JEE scores for tech applicants), then a gamified assessment for about 2,500 shortlisted candidates to evaluate problem-solving, decision-making and cognitive abilities, then video interview rounds. The page does not name the game vendor, so do not assume it is identical to the 2017 pymetrics battery; do expect short behavioural games of this family.

XAT is the other big one for anyone heading to an MBA. XLRI's official exam pattern gives Decision Making its own section of roughly 21 questions, covering ethical dilemmas at work, managerial caselets, business decisions, and situations involving fairness, distribution and prioritisation. XAT's own blog stresses that these questions often have several plausible options and asks you to pick the one that best balances practical outcomes with ethical principles.

XAT does not use games, but the overlap with this shelf is real. A question about splitting a bonus pool or allocating a scarce resource is asking the same thing Money Exchange asks: what split is fair enough to be accepted and sustainable enough to keep a relationship working.

Interviews and case discussions

Games are usually the first filter. Humans come later, and they ask about decisions in words. In Unilever's process, candidates who matched the game profile went on to recorded interview questions and then an office day that ended with a manager's decision.

Expect some version of these prompts in HR and managerial rounds:

• Tell us about a decision you made without all the information you wanted. How did you decide when to stop gathering it?
• Describe a time you trusted someone to deliver and they did not. What did you change afterwards?
• Walk us through a negotiation where you had to give something up.

These map neatly onto the three facets. A strong answer names the uncertainty, says what evidence you used and how you weighed it, states what you chose and why, and ends with what the outcome taught you. That last step is the one candidates skip, and it is exactly what the learning-from-feedback facet is about.

What assessors read from your choices

Because vendors say there is no right answer for style, it helps to know what does show.

Three things matter more than the direction of any single trait:

1. Consistency. Similar situations should get similar choices. Wildly different pumping on identical balloons, or flipping between decks after every card, reads as noise rather than style.
2. Adaptiveness. When the evidence changes, you change. Pumping less on a fragile balloon type, dropping a deck after its losses show up, investing less with a partner who keeps your money.
3. Sense. Throwing away value for no reason is visible whatever the vendor says about right answers. Rejecting every offer, never cashing in, or ignoring five losses in a row are not styles.

Where each of our games fits

• Card Decision is the four-deck learning task behind the cards and generator games.
• Balloon Pump is the balloon risk task, with several balloon types to learn, as in the original research version.
• Trust Game is the investment exchange: your transfer is tripled and the partner decides what comes back.
• Money Exchange combines proposing and responding to splits, with a counterpart whose trust in you changes with how you behave.

Remember

• Game-based batteries such as pymetrics include a balloon task, card task and money exchanges; public sources show Unilever used them as a first screen.
• Pymetrics compares candidates with a profile built from 50 to 100 high performers in the client's role.
• Hindustan Unilever's 2026 Foundation School includes a gamified assessment of decision-making for shortlisted B-school and tech candidates.
• XAT has a separate Decision Making section of about 21 questions, including fairness and distribution dilemmas.
• Interviews ask you to narrate decisions: name the uncertainty, the evidence, the choice and what you learned.
• Assessors can see consistency, adaptiveness and sense, whatever they say about right answers.

Next, how to decide better covers what practice can and cannot change, and a weekly plan.

Sources

1. Feloni, R. (2017, June 28). Consumer-goods giant Unilever has been hiring employees using brain games and artificial intelligence. Business Insider. businessinsider.com
2. Wilson, C., Ghosh, A., Jiang, S., Mislove, A., Baker, L., Szary, J., Trindel, K., & Polli, F. (2021). Building and auditing fair algorithms: A case study in candidate screening. Proceedings of FAccT '21, 666–677. doi.org/10.1145/3442188.3445928
3. Harver. Harver acquires pymetrics. harver.com; see also Feffer, M. (2022, August 17). Harver's acquisition of pymetrics will offer ‘wider, deeper’ product line. RecruitingDaily. recruitingdaily.com
4. JobTestPrep. Free pymetrics games online practice and guide (candidate-preparation site; descriptions are unofficial). jobtestprep.com
5. JobTestPrep UK. Arctic Shores assessment (candidate-preparation site; descriptions are unofficial). jobtestprep.co.uk
6. Unilever. Early Careers India 2026: Foundation School. careers.unilever.com
7. XLRI. XAT 2026 syllabus and exam pattern. xatonline.in
8. XLRI. Importance of XAT decision making section for MBA aspirants. xatonline.in