Trilogy's CCAT for software engineers: where it sits and what to aim for

Trilogy and the CCAT at a glance

Where the CCAT sits in Trilogy's hiring process

1. 1

   Online assessment

   Candidates report an initial online assessment first. Its content is not described consistently, so treat it as a separate screen.

2. 2

   CCAT

   Then the CCAT: 50 questions, 15 minutes, typically on Criteria's ondemandassessment.com platform and taken at home.

3. 3

   Interviews

   Candidates who clear the CCAT report moving on to interviews.

Steps are as candidates describe them. Processes change by role and over time.

Can your pace reach Trilogy's target?

The numbers below use our estimate for Trilogy: a range of 28 to 35 out of 50 with a target of 32. Nothing is saved. If you ask Clever below, it sees your numbers.

Trilogy, ESW Capital and Crossover

Trilogy is an enterprise software company that buys and runs business software products. It is widely reported to be part of the ESW Capital group, alongside IgniteTech and the remote hiring platform Crossover, and Crossover's job listings are commonly reported to include roles at group companies.

That matters for two reasons. First, Crossover is the one CCAT employer that publishes a score, 35 out of 50, and a group that shares hiring practices may share expectations. Second, if your Trilogy application reaches you through Crossover, Crossover's rules apply, including its rule that most third-party CCAT materials count as cheating. Check which company is running your process before you prepare.

A CCAT after an online assessment

Candidates describe the CCAT coming after an online assessment rather than as the very first step. By the time it arrives, you have already shown some technical skill, and the CCAT asks a different question: how quickly you reason through unfamiliar problems across math, words, logic and pictures.

Engineers often find the math easy and the verbal items slow. Analogies, sentence completion and antonyms reward vocabulary you may not have used since school, and a two-minute stall on one of them costs more than any series question you might have answered instead.

The pace a 32 needs

A target of 32 correct in 15 minutes is about 28 seconds per correct answer, and less once you allow for a few misses and skips. Most people do not finish all 50, so the plan is to answer what you can answer fast, guess on the rest, and keep moving.

Run a full 50-question practice set under a strict 15-minute clock before your invite expires, then look at where the minutes went. If you answered fewer than 40 questions, speed is the problem, not knowledge.

• About 18 seconds per question if you try to answer all 50.
• Pattern questions (series, matrices) are the best seconds-per-point for most engineers.
• Guess before you skip. There is no penalty for a wrong answer on the CCAT.

Question types to drill first

• Alternating seriesTwo interleaved patterns in one row. Engineers solve these fast once they check the odd and even positions separately.Number series with worked examples
• Tile matricesSpatial items with one rule per row. They look slow but take seconds once you know the common combination rules.Spatial reasoning with worked examples
• AnalogiesThe verbal type that most often slows technical candidates down. A fixed method (name the relationship in a sentence) keeps it under 20 seconds.Verbal questions with worked examples

Roles at Trilogy reported to include the CCAT

Tips for the Trilogy CCAT

• Confirm whether Trilogy or Crossover is running your process, and read Crossover's guide first if it is Crossover.
• Do not burn energy on the online assessment's leftovers. Take the CCAT in a separate, fresh sitting if the invite allows it.
• Start series questions by writing the differences between terms. If they do not form a pattern, try the odd and even positions.
• Give verbal items a hard 20-second limit. Guess and move on if the word does not come.
• Practice full 50-question sets under a strict 15-minute clock, not untimed drills only.

Practice questions in the same formats

These are our own practice questions, written in the CCAT's formats. Trilogy does not publish its test questions, and neither does Criteria. For a full timed run, take the free CCAT practice test.

How we estimate

Trilogy does not publish a CCAT score, so the numbers on this page are our estimate. We start from Criteria's published job-family floors for the roles candidates report, then place them against Criteria's two norm groups, where the median raw score is 24. We adjust for how competitive the applicant pool is, and we use an employer's own published baseline whenever one exists.

Percentiles come from a normal model on Criteria's published median and standard deviations, shown as a range across both groups. See the CCAT percentile chart for the method and what a good CCAT score is for the published job-family floors.

Clever Cat Prep is not affiliated with Trilogy or Criteria Corp. Trilogy is a trademark of its owner.