9.1 The Video Format: Most and Least Effective
Key Takeaways
- The Occupational Judgment Assessment presents videos of scenarios federal employees could encounter on the job, with four possible courses of action for each.
- You must choose both the MOST effective and the LEAST effective course of action for each scenario.
- You have 5 minutes per scenario to select both responses.
- The screen layout places scenario information on the upper left, the question below it, the video on the upper right, and the four courses of action across the bottom half.
- The question tells you from which perspective you should respond to the scenario, and closed captioning is available.
9.1 The Video Format: Most and Least Effective
Quick Summary: OPM's instructions state: you will be presented with a series of videos that are scenarios Federal employees could encounter on the job. For each scenario, you will be presented with four possible courses of action... You will be asked to choose the response that is the MOST effective course of action and the response that is the LEAST effective course of action. The assessment measures Decision Making, and you have 5 minutes per scenario to select both responses.
The screen layout
OPM describes the interface precisely, and knowing it in advance removes a real source of confusion on a timed item:
| Region | Contents |
|---|---|
| Upper left | Important information to review before watching the video |
| Below that | The question, which tells you whose perspective to respond from |
| Upper right | The video |
| Bottom half | The four courses of action |
The order implied by that layout is the order you should work in. Read the information on the upper left first. Read the question, and note the perspective. Then watch the video. Then read the four courses of action.
Jumping straight to the video is the natural instinct and the wrong one — you will be watching without knowing whose position you are meant to occupy.
The two selections
After watching the video and reading through the four courses of action, you click the button under Most Effective to choose the action you consider best for that situation, and do the same under Least Effective for the one you consider worst.
This dual selection has practical consequences.
Both selections count. Identifying the best action but misjudging the worst leaves marks on the table. Give the least-effective choice genuine attention rather than treating it as an afterthought.
The extremes are usually easier than the middle. In a well-built set of four, one action is clearly strong and one clearly poor, while two occupy a defensible middle. Since you are asked only for the extremes, you do not need to rank the middle two at all. Find the best, find the worst, and leave the middle alone.
Work the two ends independently. A useful sequence: read all four; identify the clearly weakest and mark it; identify the clearly strongest and mark it; then sanity-check that the two are genuinely at opposite ends rather than adjacent in quality.
The perspective instruction
OPM notes that the question tells you from which perspective you should respond to the scenario. This is not decorative.
A scenario may involve two colleagues, and the question may ask what you would do if you were in Barbara's position. The effective action for Barbara may differ entirely from the effective action for her colleague or for a supervisor watching.
Getting the perspective wrong makes every subsequent judgement wrong, however sound your reasoning. Before watching, note on scratch paper: I am answering as ___.
Closed captioning
The video can be viewed with closed captioning by clicking the closed captioning button located to the left of the volume button.
Use it if you are testing where audio is impractical, if you process written information more reliably, or simply to catch details you might miss on a single listen. There is no disadvantage to enabling it.
Using five minutes well
Five minutes per scenario is enough for a deliberate approach.
| Phase | Time |
|---|---|
| Read the upper-left information | 30 seconds |
| Read the question and note the perspective | 15 seconds |
| Watch the video | 60–90 seconds |
| Read all four courses of action | 45 seconds |
| Identify the least effective | 30 seconds |
| Identify the most effective | 30 seconds |
| Verify both selections and submit | 30 seconds |
That totals roughly four minutes. If the video is short you will have more margin.
One caution: the video plays for a fixed duration and you may not have time to rewatch it repeatedly within five minutes. Watch attentively the first time, and note key details — who said what, what was asked, what deadline or constraint was mentioned — on scratch paper as you watch.
What OPM says about how to answer
OPM's published preparation tips for this assessment are three:
- Read Thoroughly: carefully read the question or prompt and watch the video before selecting an answer.
- Be Honest: select answers that honestly reflect how you would respond to the workplace scenarios.
- Stay True to Yourself: don't overthink — choose answers that genuinely represent you.
These are worth taking at face value. The next section develops how to think about effectiveness, but the framing OPM offers is not "guess the scoring key" — it is to read carefully and answer honestly. Candidates who try to reverse-engineer an imagined ideal federal employee often produce less consistent responses than those who reason straightforwardly about what would actually work.
The single most common procedural error
Selecting only one of the two required responses. The item asks for both most and least effective. Before submitting, confirm you have made a selection under each heading. With no ability to return to an item after submission (Section 2.2), an omitted selection cannot be repaired.
For each Occupational Judgment scenario, what must the candidate select?
Why does OPM's note that the question tells you from which perspective to respond matter so much?
Where does OPM say the closed captioning control for the Occupational Judgment video is located?