The Curse of the Psychometric Test

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The majority of grad schemes use them in my experience. It's a handy way of benchmarking applicants against each other directly, as your education doesn't necessarily do that. You'll get a job without them, but if you're interested in getting on a scheme i'd persevere.

The tests can vary in their aim, but it's quite common that most of them make it very difficult to complete everything in the time allowed so there is a balance between speed and accuracy at play.

a) revise the sort of things they commonly ask (percentages, percentage increase or decrease, and so on) to make sure you are very clear on what you need to do when they ask for it. I found I perform reasonably well on the tests, and the way I "feel" like i'm approaching it is the time I have for the question is going on skimming the information, and picking out what I need. The actual process of doing it is relatively ingrained/automatic.

b) practice tests. There are loads of them online, and if you're in contact with your university careers still they will probably have some paid tests they have access to for current students and graduates (~ graduated within the last 3-5 years). I always do a couple of practice tests right before doing an actual one. The careers service might have some other advice, always worth checking.

c) don't panic. If you do get really stuck on a question and feel like you've used too much time (i.e. glance at the timer here and there) just guess and move on. Obviously, if you feel like that with every question you need to go back and revise/practice, but I sometimes end up with stuff where i've either misread the question in haste, made an error somewhere, or just struggling to see what I need. Some practice tests will break it down for you actually, and you'll see whether you're correct but too slow, or quick but too inaccurate.

You only have to look around online to see a lot of people find them difficult, so you're not alone, and there's no need to feel silly you can do it, but it will take time getting used to and building your rhythm up. Similarly there are free tests available for the logical reasoning and verbal ones, if you need to polish those up a bit. I find some of the logical reasoning ones are very hard (~2-3 things happening at once), but in doing them it really highlights the simplicity of others. The logical tests with explanations of why X is the right answer were very useful to help me get into the mindset.

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Are there any prospective graduate schemes that don't have such tests?

Is there any literature that can prepare you for these tests?.

Once you been through that torture a few times you'll start applying for smaller company's who want grads and will interview you in a sane manner.