Typing tests for jobs

Pass with room to spare: practise on real sentences, build a margin above the advertised speed and fix your accuracy first.

Check your speed and accuracy

For decades, the US federal government has used the same typing bar for its clerk-typist jobs: 40 words per minute, measured on a five-minute sample, with no more than three errors. Private employers are less tidy about it, but most job typing tests look much the same. You get a passage, a timer and a score that counts your mistakes against you.

That's good news, because a test with a known shape is a test you can prepare for. Here's what employers measure, the speeds they tend to ask for, and how to make sure the number you reach at home is the number you reach on the day.

What a job typing test looks like

Most tests ask you to copy a passage for one to five minutes. Criteria, a pre-employment testing company, gives candidates one minute on a passage and reports three numbers: words per minute, errors, and an adjusted speed with the errors taken off. Public employers tend to want longer samples. The US federal standard is based on five minutes of typing, and California's state jobs only accept typing certificates from supervised tests at least five minutes long.

Data entry jobs often test numbers instead, scored in keystrokes per hour (KPH) and usually typed on the number pad. Criteria's 10-key test has 20 entries and typically takes under five minutes; TestGorilla's runs for two. If the advert mentions 10-key, read 10-key typing as well as this guide.

Some roles get a test closer to the job itself. Some testing companies offer form-filling tests, where you type details into fields, and audio dictation tests, where you type what you hear, for jobs such as phone-based customer service.

Where you take it varies too: a link emailed before an interview, a computer in the office on interview day, a staffing agency's test room, or a supervised session for a certificate. Online tests run in the browser, and some block copy and paste.

Rules that change your score

Before you start, find out:

• whether Backspace works. Some tests switch it off and count every slip; others let you fix mistakes as you go.
• whether capitals and punctuation are marked. Assume they are.
• how long the test is, and whether you can take it again.
• how errors are counted: per wrong word, per wrong character, or only the mistakes you left uncorrected.

If the instructions don't say, ask. Nobody marks you down for asking how a test works.

The speeds employers ask for

A few employers publish their rules. Most just put a number in the advert, and those numbers vary a lot, so treat everything below the first three rows as typical rather than official.

The first three rows are published rules from the US Office of Personnel Management and California's Department of Human Resources. The rest are ranges seen in job adverts and test providers' guidance. The advert for your job is the number that counts.

Two things stand out. Most of these requirements sit below the average typing speed of about 52 WPM, so raw speed is rarely the hard part. And almost every test cares about errors as much as speed, which is where people come unstuck.

How your score is worked out

Gross speed is usually worked out the same way: characters typed, spaces included, divided by five, divided by minutes. What happens to your mistakes is where tests part company.

Take one five-minute attempt. You type 1,300 characters, which is 260 "words", so your gross speed is 52 WPM. You leave 8 errors behind. Now score it three ways:

• Errors per minute taken off, a common net speed formula: 8 errors ÷ 5 minutes = 1.6, so net speed is 52 − 1.6 = 50.4 WPM. Comfortably over 40.
• A cap on errors, as in the federal standard: 52 WPM is well over 40, but 8 errors is more than 3. That's a fail.
• A heavy penalty for each error, the rule of the old typing contests, where every error cost ten words (Guinness still lists the 1923 one-hour record that way): 260 − 80 = 180 words in five minutes, or 36 WPM. Another fail.

Same typist, same five minutes, three different verdicts. The lesson is the one every typing teacher repeats: accuracy is the bigger lever. Cutting your errors from eight to two does more for your result than adding 10 WPM of speed you can't control. How to improve typing accuracy shows how to find your usual mistakes and fix them.

On CamelKeys, WPM counts only correctly typed words, so it sits closer to a net score, while raw speed is closer to gross. If you practise on a passage somewhere else, the WPM calculator turns characters, seconds and wrong characters into speed and accuracy.

Why your test score comes out lower than at home

Don't be surprised if a job test gives you a lower number than your favourite practice site. The usual reasons are predictable, and each has a fix.

Copying is slower than composing. Many tests show the passage in one place and your typing in another, and every glance between them costs time. eSkill, another test provider, makes the same point: typing your own thoughts flows faster than copying a reference text. Practise copying from a page, not only from words lined up in front of your cursor.

Real text is harder. Job tests use proper sentences with capitals, commas, apostrophes and numbers. Practice made of common lowercase words flatters you.

Five minutes is long. If you only ever take one-minute tests, the last two minutes of a five-minute test are where your speed and accuracy slide.

Somebody else's keyboard. Different key feel, different size, sometimes a different layout. If you type on a laptop at home, a full-size desktop keyboard in a test room can cost you the first minute.

So build a margin. If the advert says 40 WPM, practise until you can do 48 to 50 with at least 97% accuracy. Then even a bad day passes.

A two-week plan

Fifteen to twenty minutes a day for two weeks gives you time to tidy up your accuracy and get used to the format. If the test is next week, squeeze the plan into seven days, but don't skip the stamina and rehearsal steps.

Days 1 and 2: find your real number

Take three one-minute tests at different times of day and write down the middle result, not the best. Then do one five-minute test the way employers do: open a plain text editor, prop a printed page or a magazine next to the keyboard, type it for exactly five minutes, and note the character count with spaces, which most editors and word processors show. Mark your errors by hand and put the numbers into the WPM calculator. Now you know your speed and accuracy over five minutes of copying, which is what the test will see.

Days 3 to 7: fix accuracy first

Type at about 90% of your usual speed and aim for 98% accuracy. After each test, look at what went wrong: the results page here sorts your mistakes by type and builds a practice drill from your slowest keys and letter pairs. If capitals and punctuation trip you up, go back through the capital letter lessons (17 and 18) and the punctuation and symbol lessons (22 to 25) of the touch typing lessons. They're short, and job passages are full of exactly those keys.

Days 8 to 12: build stamina in the test format

Take five one-minute tests back to back without a break; that's your five minutes. Every other day, do another five-minute copy from paper. If your test switches Backspace off, practise without it: when you make a mistake, keep going. If Backspace is allowed, fix a mistake the moment you notice it, never three words later.

Days 13 and 14: rehearse, then rest

Run through the whole thing once more at the time of day your test is booked, on a keyboard like the one you'll use if you can. Then stop. Cramming the night before mostly practises tired mistakes.

On the day

Read every instruction before you press start, and ask about anything that isn't clear: Backspace, the time limit, whether capitals count. If you're testing in person, sort out the chair and keyboard before the timer starts. Nobody minds you taking twenty seconds to lower a chair. A test full of errors typed hunched over a desk that's too high is another matter.

If you're allowed, warm up by typing a sentence or two. Many people are a few WPM slower on their first test of the day.

When the timer starts, go at your steady practice pace, not your best-ever pace. The first ten seconds set your rhythm, and starting too fast is the classic way to make three errors in the first line. If you slip, deal with it the way the rules allow and move on. Don't stop to stare at it; the clock won't.

If it goes badly, ask whether you can take it again and when. Some employers and agencies allow a retest after a waiting period, and it costs nothing to ask.

Putting your typing speed on a CV or resume

List it when the job involves a lot of typing: data entry, administration, transcription, legal or medical secretarial work, chat support. For other jobs it adds little, and a modest number can even work against you. Put it in your skills section, in a form people recognise:

Typing: 65 WPM, 98% accuracy

Include the accuracy; a speed on its own looks like a guess. If the number came from a five-minute test, say so, because that's the format employers trust. For data entry jobs, add your 10-key speed in KPH.

Only list a number you can reproduce under test conditions, on a five-minute passage, on an average day. That means your typical speed, not your best one-minute burst. Employers can and do check. The federal standard, for example, lets applicants certify their own typing speed, but it also lets agencies verify it with a test.

Are typing certificates worth getting?

Usually only when an employer asks for one, and then only the kind they accept. California's state jobs want a certificate from a supervised test at least five minutes long, issued in the last four years and showing at least 40 WPM; they won't accept tests that were unsupervised or shorter. Some US counties and cities publish similar rules. A certificate printed from a free website rarely meets them.

The federal standard accepts a test result, a certificate from an authorised school or organisation, or your own self-certification, and test results and certificates count for three years. For most private employers, the test they give you is the one that counts, and a certificate from somewhere else changes nothing.

CamelKeys doesn't issue certificates. If you'd like a link that shows your progress, your profile lists your personal bests and speed badges from tests re-scored on the server, but an employer will still run their own test.

Where to start

Take a one-minute test now and write down two numbers: your WPM and your accuracy. Put them next to the requirement in the advert. If you're already 20% above it with 97% accuracy or better, spend your time on stamina and the five-minute format. If you're below it, start with accuracy, not speed. Either way, set a daily goal of 15 minutes and keep the streak going until test day.

Sources

• US Office of Personnel Management, “Group Coverage Qualification Standard for Clerical and Administrative Support Positions” (proficiency requirements for typing), archived 2012.
• USAJOBS, vacancy announcement for Survey Clerk (Office Automation), GS-0303-05, 2026 (40 WPM with three or fewer errors in a five-minute sample).
• California Department of Human Resources, “Typing Certification Requirements”, CalCareers.
• Criteria Corp, “Typing Test” and “Ten Key Test” descriptions, criteriacorp.com.
• TestGorilla, “10-Key Typing (Numbers Only)” test description, testgorilla.com.
• eSkill, “Find Your Next Typing Wizard with eSkill Online Typing Tests”, 2019.