Pymetrics replaces the numerical paper with twelve short games. They measure attention, risk, and how you treat other people, and the employer matches your profile to its own team. Here is what each game is doing and how to prepare honestly.
Pymetrics arrives as a link, usually after an application form and before a human reads your CV. It feels less like an exam than a set of mini-games, which is exactly why candidates underprepare. The games are short, but they generate a detailed trait profile that the employer uses to decide who moves forward.
This guide explains what the games are measuring, why faking a profile tends to backfire, and how to prepare in a way that actually improves your result. If your process also includes a group day, the assessment centre tips guide covers what comes after the online stage.
Why finance firms use game-based assessments
Traditional numerical tests measure one narrow skill: can you read a chart and calculate quickly. Game-based assessments try to measure a wider set of traits that predict how someone performs in a junior role, such as attention to detail, learning speed, resilience after mistakes, and how they cooperate.
For banks and asset managers, that wider picture matters because the job is not a maths exam. An analyst spends the day switching between tasks, checking numbers, taking feedback, and working with people who have different priorities. A game-based profile gives the recruiter a signal on those behaviours before the first interview.
The trade-off is that the result is probabilistic. It is a match score, not a verdict on your ability. That is why two candidates with similar profiles can get different outcomes at different firms.
What the employer does with your profile
The employer does not receive a single score you can compare with a friend. It receives a set of trait scores, and the recruiting team compares them with a benchmark built from people already doing the job. Some banks weight attention and learning speed heavily for trading roles. Others weight cooperation and resilience for client-facing paths.
That benchmark is specific to the firm and often to the division. A profile that looks strong for a markets role may look ordinary for a private equity team, because the two jobs reward different combinations. This is why you should not read a rejection as a judgement on your intelligence.
It also explains why the same candidate can pass at one bank and fail at another in the same week. The games are standardised. The target profile is not.
The practical implication is simple: prepare to perform at your normal level, not to guess what a particular bank wants. You cannot see the benchmark, and trying to reverse-engineer it usually makes your answers less coherent.
The games you are likely to play
Pymetrics rotates its game library and employers choose a subset, so your set may not match someone else's exactly. The common ones fall into a few families.
| Game family | What you do | What it tends to measure |
|---|---|---|
| Balloon pump | Pump a balloon for points, bank before it pops | Risk tolerance, learning from near-misses |
| Money exchange | Decide how much to send to a partner and whether to repay | Trust, fairness, reciprocity |
| Card sort | Sort cards by changing rules | Attention, rule learning, flexibility |
| Memory and attention | Recall sequences or spot changes | Working memory, focus, consistency |
| Emotion and feedback | Read faces or respond to feedback | Social perception, resilience |
The exact names vary, and the games are deliberately simple. Do not look for hidden tricks in the interface. The scoring comes from your choices across many trials, not from one clever move.
The balloon game, explained properly
The balloon game is the one candidates ask about most, and it is the easiest to misunderstand.
Each round gives you a balloon. Every pump adds points to a temporary pot, but also increases the chance that the balloon pops. If you bank in time, the points are yours. If it pops, you lose that round's pot.
The game is not testing whether you are brave. It is testing whether you learn the risk curve and adjust. A candidate who pumps three times every round and banks is showing consistency. A candidate who pumps twenty times, pops twice, then becomes ultra-cautious is showing a reaction to feedback that may look erratic.
The sensible approach is to treat the first few rounds as information. Notice roughly where the balloon tends to pop, then settle into a strategy you can repeat. Do not try to maximise one round at the expense of the overall pattern.
Why faking the profile backfires
Candidates often ask which answers employers want. The honest answer is that the model is built from real employees, and the scoring looks for coherent patterns rather than individual "good" choices.
If you answer one section as a risk-taker and the next as deeply risk-averse, the profile looks inconsistent. If you try to present as a perfect team player in every social game, the pattern can look flat or socially unrealistic. Neither is a strong signal.
Answer as you would actually behave, at a normal pace, in a quiet room. That gives the employer a real profile to match. It also means that if you are a good fit, the result reflects it.
How to prepare without overtraining
Preparation for Pymetrics is mostly about removing noise, not learning content.
- Practise sustained attention. The games reward focus across 25 minutes. Do a timed practice session in one sitting rather than in fragments.
- Play the balloon game a few times. Understand the risk trade-off, then leave it alone. More than five attempts starts to train an artificial strategy.
- Sleep and eat normally. Reaction time and consistency drop when you are tired, and the games are sensitive to both.
- Use a quiet room and a stable connection. A dropped connection mid-game is one of the few things that can genuinely damage a profile.
- Read the instructions for each game. They are short, but the scoring rules differ, and guessing the objective is a common mistake.
Do not buy question banks for Pymetrics. There is no fixed question set to memorise, and the products that claim otherwise are usually selling generic psychometric practice.
What happens after the games
You usually receive no score. The employer receives a profile, and you hear back only if you progress. That silence can feel strange after a 30-minute assessment, but it is normal for this stage.
If you advance, the next step is often a recorded video interview or a live first round. Our HireVue interview questions guide covers the video format. If you want to see how one private equity firm combines Pymetrics with a recorded round, read the Blackstone HireVue guide.
Where Pymetrics sits in the wider testing picture
Game-based assessments are one of several formats you may meet in a finance application. Others include numerical reasoning, verbal reasoning, situational judgement, and assessment centres with group tasks. Our psychometric test investment banking guide maps the full set and explains which firms tend to use which.
If your invite includes a numerical section alongside the games, treat that as the higher-priority practice task. Numerical scores are easier to move with deliberate practice, and the pass thresholds are clearer. Start with our numerical reasoning test guide.
What to do after reading this
Before you open a Pymetrics link, clear 35 minutes, use a quiet room, and read each game's instructions properly. Play the balloon game a few times to understand the risk trade-off, then stop practising and answer honestly.
If you are juggling several applications, Finbound's study board ranks the next task by the bank and stage you are actually in, so the test you have this week comes before the one you might get next month. Start for free to add your first three applications.