Is PwC still using Career Unlocked? No: what replaced it

No. PwC's own careers site now describes the first stage of its early careers process as an online assessment hosted on the SHL platform: a behavioural assessment first, then a cognitive test, with the behavioural one untimed and the cognitive one timed. Career Unlocked, the Arctic Shores game-based assessment, was the earlier format, and PwC's current description names no game at all. If you are practising for something you play, you are practising for the wrong stage.

This matters because a number of preparation pages still present the game as PwC's current first stage. Below is what PwC itself says, what Career Unlocked was, and then a method for grading any other guide you read on the subject, including this one.

What PwC describes now, instead of Career Unlocked

PwC publishes its assessment and selection process. On the online assessment stage it describes a series of online activities that measure cognitive skills, behaviours, natural preferences and reasoning abilities, and it names where those activities run.

The test is hosted in the SHL platform.— PwC, assessment and selection process, pwc.co.uk, read 18 September 2026

That wording was read on PwC's assessment and selection page on 18 September 2026. If you are reading this months later, open the same page and check it against what follows. It takes a minute, and it is exactly the check we recommend you run on every other guide further down.

The order PwC gives is specific. You take a behavioural assessment first, then a cognitive test. The behavioural profile asks about your natural behavioural preferences in a work setting and is not timed. The cognitive test is an ability test including numerical, inductive and deductive reasoning, and it is timed. Alongside those there is an activity called Bringing our values to life, which is not assessed.

That is what PwC names: a behavioural assessment, a cognitive test, one platform, three reasoning types, and nothing in the description that resembles a game. PwC calls the stage a series of online activities, and says the cognitive test includes those three reasoning types, so its wording does not formally rule out more. What it does describe is specific enough to prepare for. For the stages either side of the online assessment, and what PwC does and does not publish about each, see the guide to the PwC online assessment.

What Career Unlocked was

Career Unlocked is a game-based assessment associated with Arctic Shores, and it was PwC's earlier online assessment format. That is as far as this page will describe it. Detailed accounts of how the games played circulate on preparation sites, we have not verified any of them, and walking you through a format nobody is being asked to sit would be the exact failure this article is about.

One caveat, by our own standard. PwC's page confirms what its assessment is now; it does not say what the assessment used to be. That Career Unlocked came earlier is something we are taking from the preparation industry itself, including at least one site that now warns readers not to assume the old game format still applies. So treat the succession as well attested rather than official. What is directly checkable, and what actually decides how you prepare, is the current description, which names no game.

Why guides still say PwC uses Career Unlocked

Preparation pages are written once and then lightly maintained, and a page can be re-dated at the top without being re-read at the bottom. A date on a preparation page tells you when the page was touched, not when its claims were last checked against the employer. Nothing obliges anyone to notice when a careers page changes, and meanwhile the old page keeps its links, keeps its position, and keeps telling candidates to prepare for a format that is no longer described. The one fixed point available to you is what PwC's page says on the day you read it, which is why every check below ends up back there.

There is a visible tell in the industry itself. At least one of the preparation sites now warns its readers not to assume the former Career Unlocked game format still applies, while other pages covering the same assessment carry on presenting the Career Unlocked game as the thing you are about to sit. When guides contradict each other, the employer's own page settles it, and the relevant section is about two minutes of reading.

Five ways to tell whether a PwC guide is out of date

You do not need inside knowledge to grade a preparation page. Five checks are enough, and they take roughly a minute.

One warning sign is worth noting. Two is worth closing the tab and going back to PwC's page.

The sourcing check is the strongest of the five. Preparation sites cite each other constantly, so a single stale claim can spread across a dozen pages and start to look like consensus through repetition alone. A page that links to the employer can be verified in one click. A page that links only to other preparation sites cannot be verified at all, and volume is not evidence.

The skills check is the subtlest. PwC's description names numerical, inductive and deductive reasoning. Some preparation pages also list verbal reasoning, and many describe a situational judgement test. Verbal reasoning does not appear in PwC's early careers wording at all; it is mentioned only on PwC's experienced careers page, which is a different recruitment track. The situational judgement claim is simply wrong for student programmes: PwC's own candidate e-learn states that it does not use situational judgement tests when recruiting onto its school and college leaver, undergraduate or graduate programmes. It is the same habit that kept the game alive in print long after PwC stopped describing it.

The last check arrives disguised as helpfulness. PwC publishes neither a question count nor a time limit, so a page quoting one is passing on a generic figure from somewhere else, and a pacing plan built on it is built on nothing.

What replaces it, and what to practise

The useful thing about the current description is that it is specific enough to prepare for directly. Four things are named, and each one is practisable.

1. Numerical reasoning. Pulling figures out of charts and tables and working with percentages, ratios, totals and change over time. The arithmetic itself is ordinary; doing it accurately while a clock runs is the difficulty.
2. Inductive reasoning. Finding the rule behind a sequence of shapes or patterns and continuing it. No numbers and no language, just the pattern and how it moves.
3. Deductive reasoning. Taking a set of constraints and drawing the single conclusion they force: orderings, schedules, who can be where and when.
4. The behavioural profile. Untimed, and about preferences rather than right answers. Answer it honestly and consistently rather than trying to reverse engineer a profile you think the firm wants.

Two habits matter more than any single content area. Practise against a clock, because the cognitive test is timed and untimed practice teaches you method without pace. And practise all three reasoning types rather than only numerical, which attracts most of the attention and is one of the three PwC names. Single-section drills are the quickest way to even that out, and our five practice tests are built from exactly those three sections, under a timer, for the same reason.

If you have already been preparing for Career Unlocked

The practical response is short and slightly dull. Read PwC's assessment and selection page yourself. Then spend whatever time is left on timed numerical, inductive and deductive questions. There is no need to work out how the two formats relate to each other, or to hunt for a guide that explains the transition; what PwC describes today is plain enough to prepare for without anything in between.

If you have already been invited to sit the assessment, the instructions sent with your invitation describe what you are about to take more reliably than any preparation page, this one included. Read them before you read anything else, and check the on-screen timing when you get there rather than assuming a figure you picked up from a guide.

We are independent, and not affiliated with PwC or SHL. Everything above about PwC's process comes from PwC's own careers page, which is exactly the check we have just recommended you run on us. The first practice test is free if you want to see where the three reasoning types currently sit for you.