Arctic Shores pilot assessment: what to expect

Arctic Shores is a recruitment-technology company whose assessments work differently from a traditional pilot aptitude test. Instead of right-or-wrong questions, it uses what it calls task-based assessment: a set of short interactive tasks that capture how you behave, then scores that behaviour.

Arctic Shores frames what it measures in two parts, personality and what it calls Workplace Intelligence, its take on cognitive ability, and says it captures thousands of data points from how you approach the tasks rather than what you say about yourself. It reports on behavioural qualities such as how you respond to change, handle challenges, work with numbers, identify patterns and make decisions. There is no single correct answer to memorise.

The point of the task-based approach is that it reads behaviour as it happens rather than asking you to rate yourself, which sidesteps the tendency in a traditional questionnaire to pick the answer you think an employer wants. Arctic Shores says most candidates find the tasks engaging, which it links to unusually high completion rates. For a pilot cadet scheme, that means the stage is looking for a genuine behavioural fit with the role rather than a rehearsed set of responses.

In airline cadet selection, the clearest documented user is Jet2's FlightPath cadet-pilot scheme, which uses an Arctic Shores task-based assessment as an early cognitive and behavioural stage, corroborated by applicant accounts and Jet2's own candidate guidance.

Arctic Shores' wider client base is mostly outside aviation, and it does not publish an airline case study of its own, so beyond Jet2 you should confirm with the specific scheme whether Arctic Shores is part of its process rather than assume from another airline's example.