Are you looking to implement a best in class candidate assessment process? Fortunately, there are some great pre-employment evaluation tools that can help you look beyond the resume to find the right talent and more productively build high-performing teams.
As a recruiter or hiring manager, you have a tough job. Between competing against other companies for top talent and filtering through hundreds of often-unqualified applicants, you’re spending a lot of time and money on recruiting efforts that you hope will result in a win for both your company and your candidate.
You can take some of this guesswork away by using a candidate assessment tool to automate the screening process, assess candidates’ skills and culture fit, compare results across your applicant pool, and use data to make unbiased hiring decisions that work.
To help you make the right investment, we put together this guide on all things candidate assessment. Keep reading to find a list of the best talent assessment tools along with key features, pricing guidelines, questions to ask on demos, and more.
We spend hundreds of hours researching the best HR and recruiting software so you don’t have to. We never take money from vendors during our research phase and rely heavily on practitioners and experts to help us recommend the right software. However we may earn a fee if you click on vendor links on this page. Learn more
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Hours Researched
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6
Experts Consulted
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42
Vendors Reviewed
Our criteria: How we chose the best vendors
We take our research seriously and want to make sure we are presenting our readers with the very best solutions in a given software category. Here's how we select vendors to be in our buyer guides:
- Product: We want to have a deep understanding of a vendor's product before recommending it. This usually means getting a demo by a senior executive (their CEO, head of product, etc), and/or using the product ourselves to make sure it has a solid UI, intuitive workflows, and the features to make it a best in class offering.
- User feedback: We do our best to understand what users say when they experience this product. User input allows us to accomplish a more thorough due diligence of products, put new vendors on our radar, and generally make sure we are presenting the right products to our readers.
- Financial metrics: We are very much finance nerds and so use a product's retention rates, growth, profitability, and scale to understand whether or not it is truly best in class.
- Best for a use case: Sometimes the best solution is the cheapest, the best tool for international companies, or the best for startups. We try to include a diversity of solutions so that our readers can find the tool that is best for what they need.
Here's more detail if you want to read further on how we research vendors.
In this guide you'll find
- Top Employee Assessment Tools
- Use-Cases: Why Use Candidate Assessment Tools
- Common Mistakes With Employee Screening Tools
- Benefits and ROI From Pre-Employment Screening Software
- Pricing for Candidate Assessment Tools
- Features: What You Can Expect from Candidate Assessment Tools
- Demo Questions for Employee Assessment Tools
- Implementing Talent Assessment Tools
- Pre-Employment Assessment Software FAQs
- Candidate Assessment Software, Final Advice
Featured in
Top Employee Assessment Tools
We track thousands of HRTech solutions, these are the best hiring assessments per our research and expert council as of 2022.
Why we love it
:
VidCruiter can work as an all-in-one recruitment solutions, having tools & features for screening, testing, reference checks, and interviews.
- VidCruiter’s customers can choose the modules they want and purchase them individually, or purchase the entire recruiting suite, inclusive of all modules, i.e. video interviewing, applicant tracking, skill assessments, scheduling, and more.
- VidCruiter’s pre-recorded interview feature saves hiring managers a lot of time and eliminates scheduling conflicts. It also offers candidates the flexibility to record their answers at their convenience.
- VidCruiter supports mobile recruiting for on-the-go access. Both candidates and recruiters can view pre-recorded video interviews or join live video interviews/conferences from their iOS and Android mobile devices.
- VidCruiter’s account managers are quite hands-on. Besides helping you get started with the platform, they’ll also help you perform other processes, such as setting up the tracking and conversion metrics of your targeted ad campaigns so you can measure their success.
- VidCruiter is a multilingual recruiting solution. Besides English, it’s available in French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, Chinese, and Korean, both for recruiters and candidates.
- Several users have reported a steep learning curve and that the UI takes some time to get used to.
- A few users reported occasional video lag issues that aren’t internet connectivity-related.
- VidCruiter’s skills assessment module is great as an add-on, but isn’t built out enough compared to point solutions in that space. For example, it doesn’t really support advanced technical skills testing.
- VidCruiter doesn’t have a lot of pre-built integration options with HRIS/Payroll systems. That said, VidCruiter’s team is working on expanding their partner network and might create integrations upon customer requests.
VidCruiter
Review:
VidCruiter allows recruiting teams to test candidates' hard skills (math, language, technology), as well as soft skills (judgement, behavioral, etc) through automated assessments. They also have a great video interview platform to augment the data collected through more traditional pre-employment testing.
VidCruiter
Customers:
VidCruiter customers include the United Nations, Axa, Samsung, Lowe's, and US Foods.
VidCruiter
Stats:
- Used by 75,000+ recruiters
- Some VidCruiter customers have seen their time-to-hire go down by 80%
Best For:
Smaller businesses all the way up through KPMG use VidCruiter to help screen candidates.
Worth Checking Out:
VidCruiter is also available as a full recruitment suite, giving you access to all of their products for a single custom price.
Why we love it
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CodinGame is a developer screening & evaluation tool that offers millions of coding challenges to complete. It's an excellent tool for companies that need to hire a lot of developers.
CodinGame
Review:
If you're looking for a vendor that does candidate assessment specific to jobs that require coding, Coding game is a great bet. Their assessments try to mimic the actual work they'd do if hired as much as possible. In addition to being a gamified tool to assess developers, it also has video interviewing and candidate management capabilities.
CodinGame
Customers:
CodinGame is used by coding-heavy companies like Facebook, Nintendo, EA, Ubisoft, and Warner Bros.
CodinGame
Stats:
- Over 15 million coding challenges
- 96.98% test completion rate
- Tests on 42 technologies and over 28 programming languages
- 2 million developers in their international community
CodinGame
Pricing:
CodinGame starts with a 14-day free trial. After that, the 'Growth' plans is €249 per month and is designed for companies that want to hire just a few developers in the next months. For higher growth business with more intense and immediate hiring needs, they also offer customized enterprise pricing.
Best For:
CodinGame is obviously made for companies that require a great deal of developers and engineers among their ranks. However, their solution can be for businesses big and small.
Worth Checking Out:
CodinGame also has a sourcing offering that allows your company to build a pipeline of engineering talent. That one starts at €299 per job profile
Why we love it
:
Harver is a pre-employment assessment platform designed with the input of industrial and organizational psychologists. Their platform also includes an on-demand video interview tool.
Harver
Review:
Each year, over 4 million applicants go through a Harver powered assessment. These assessments test everything from hard skills to behavioral qualities that make candidates a fit, or not. Their tool allows HR teams to focus on the best fit candidates which saves time and leads to more successful hiring outcomes. In addition to tests, job applicants can get a feel for the role through video and situational judgement tests, and opt out of jobs they know they aren't interested in.
Harver
Customers:
Some of Harver's notable customers include Netflix, McDonald's, UI Path, and KPMG.
Harver
Stats:
- At KPMG, they helped increase female hires by 44%
- At Majorel, they aided with reducing the attrition rate by 63%
- Working with Aldi, they reduced their time-to-hire by 52%
- 97% candidate satisfaction rate
Best For
Harver was originally built for enterprises. However, they also have a mid-market solution called HarverGo. This version is ideal for companies with a few hundred employees.
Worth Checking Out:
Harver has a team of IO psychologists who help build and validate assessments for your specific company and roles, identifying your unique assessment formula predictive of success in your specific context.
Why we love it
:
The Predictive Index is a talent optimization platform that helps with hiring, management, talent strategy, and employee engagement.
PredictiveIndex
Review:
PI’s behavioral, skills, and cognitive assessments empower human resources teams to better vet talent before joining.
PredictiveIndex
Customers:
PI is used by Subway, IBM, DocuSign, Hard Rock Hotel, Canon, and Nissan, among many others.
PredictiveIndex
Stats:
- Used by over 8,000 companies
- 37.5 million assessments processed
- 383 validity studies completed
PredictiveIndex
Pricing:
Although it is free to create an account, full pricing and plan details are not provided upfront by this vendor.
Best For
The Predictive Index is a useful tool and resource for companies of varied sizes and consultants alike.
Worth Checking Out:
The Predictive Index has an interesting model that works with hundreds of HR consultants - chances are there is one in your neck of the woods that can help you implement their solution.
Why we love it
:
HireVue is a solid video interview platform that keeps adding novel & relevant products to their offering, such as candidate assessment and AI recruiting.
HireVue
Review:
HireVue was one of the very first video interview platforms and really helped to pioneer that space. They’ve also added a suite of assessment tools to help HR figure out whether or not a given candidate is a good fit.
HireVue
Customers:
Some of the noteworthy brands that use HireVue are Unilever, Rackspace Technology, KraftHeinz, Dow Jones, and Sodexo.
HireVue
Stats:
HireVue has helped customers achieve feats such as:
- 90% decrease in time-to-hire
- 131% ROI
- 16% increase in diversity hiring
- Processed over 19M interviews
HireVue
Pricing:
HireVue's pricing schemes aren't publicly-disclosed, since they mainly offer custom enterprise plans.
Best For
HireVue's products are made with large enterprises in mind.
Worth Checking Out:
HireVue’s platform is fairly robust and uses a combination of traditional and game-based assessments to screen talent.
Why we love it
:
HackerRank is one of the largest tech assessment platforms out there with customers such as AirBnB, DropBox and more.
HackerRank
Review:
The HackerRank Developer Skills Platform can boost your recruitment plan through each step of the candidate's journey. Their solution is used not only to assess tech skills, but to plan recruitment processes, source candidates, automate screening, interview people remotely, and rank the bes talent for each position.
HackerRank
Customers:
HackerRank is also used by brands like Cisco, Twitter, Bloomberg, and VMware.
HackerRank
Stats:
- 2,000+ customers
- 25% of their customer base are Fortune 100 companies
- HackerRank as been used to assess over 11M developers
- Library of 91 million coding challenges
- In average, 70,000 assessments taken every day
HackerRank
Pricing:
Aside from their free trial, HackerRank has four plans. The first is Interview, which is just $25 per month but gives you access only to the interview module. To get access to their tests, you'd have to start with the Platform plan, which is $249 per month and can process up to 30 candidates per month. Then, there's the Platform plan, at $599 per month and for 100 candidates each month. For larger hiring volumes, they have custom enterprise pricing.
Best For
In their words, HackerRank is "enterprise-ready for effortless scaling". This means it's used both by fast-growing startups and Fortune 100 companies.
Worth Checking Out:
HackerRank also has a vibrant community of developers working on their skills to get better.
Why we love it
:
XOR allows large companies with considerable hiring volume to automatically assess candidates through an AI chatbot. This solutions can also screen, schedule calls, and record video interviews.
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XOR
Review:
XOR is a chatbot that screens job seekers before your recruiters speak with them. Their solution allows you to quickly add questions, rank their importance, and then sort candidates by score.
XOR
Customers:
XOR is used by Mars, Manpower, Ikea, and McDonald's, among others.
XOR
Stats:
XOR has helped clients to achieve milestones like:
- 33% faster time-to-hire
- 50% lower hiring costs
- 90% net promoter score from candidates
XOR
Pricing:
XOR bases its pricing on how many recruitment and HR users you'll need to have in the platform.
Best For
XOR is mainly thought of as a tool for large companies.
Worth Checking Out:
XOR’s solution can handle basic screening and then either schedule a passed applicant to talk to a recruiter, or tell them about other roles they are a better fit for.
Why we love it
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Vervoe is a growing vendor fully-focused on the candidate assessment space. They're remarkable for implementing AI technology in their assessments and having beautiful design.
Vervoe
Review:
Vervoe allows recruiting teams to make the right hiring decisions based on an applicant’s potential performance. Their AI-powered solution automatically grades customized tests, and ranks candidates according to job-related skills. The platform includes skills tests, video interviews and coding assessments. It’s an intuitive and powerful way to build and manage your assessments.
Vervoe
Customers:
Vervoe is championed by companies like Walmart, Australia Post, FDM, TriNet, OmnicomGroup, and several more.
Vervoe
Stats:
- 10+ immersive questions types
- 100s of skills assessment templates
- Coding challenges in 8 languages
Vervoe
Pricing:
After the free 3-month trial, Vervoe's pricing begins with the Starter plan. At $79/month, billed annually, this one includes 2 assessments, 3 team seats, 100 candidates per assessment, and only the Zapier integration.
Their Professional plan is $399/month, with upgrades available. It includes 4 assessments, 6 team seats, and 300 candidates per assessment, as well as an integration with Greenhouse.
For unlimited assessments and teams, Vervoe offers custom enterprise pricing.
Best For
Vervoe has plans and pricing schemes that are suited for individuals, startups, fast-growing companies, and large enterprises.
Worth Checking Out:
Vervoe charges on a per hire basis which allows your team to use their solution across all candidates.
Why we love it
:
CodeSignal is a candidate assessment tool for engineers and developers. As a platform, it also features remote interviews and certified assessments.
CodeSignal
Review:
CodeSignal’s team wants us to go beyond the resume when we vet engineers - which is definitely a great idea given all the signal we can get from understanding the skills and aptitude a given applicant has.
CodeSignal
Customers:
CodeSignal is used to hire engineers at companies like Uber, Zoom, Robinhood, Asana, Gusto, Brex, Quora, and Reddit.
CodeSignal
Stats:
- At Outreach, implementing code signal meant freeing up 40-60% of their engineers' time.
- 70+ languages and tools supported
CodeSignal
Pricing:
CodeSignal doesn't disclose prices upfront. They prefer to start by understanding your recruiting process and the type of challenges you're facing. Based on that, they can provide you with a custom package after a scheduled call.
Best For
CodeSignal is made for companies, mainly enterprise level, that need to hire many engineers, developers, and test for coding skills on a frequent basis.
Worth Checking Out:
CodeSignal uses automated proctoring to cut down on any nefarious activity during a coding test.
Why we love it
:
myInterview is a video interview platform that uses AI to help recruiting teams evaluate candidates. Their solution is incredibly easy to implement for smaller companies.
MyInterview
Review:
myInterview is where video interviews meet AI sourcing and bias-free assessments. They can set you up with a queue of custom-picked candidates to watch. Their algorithms scan every video to reveal the best matches to each job. Further, each video is analyzed for things like soft skills, personality traits, and keywords.
MyInterview
Customers:
Hudson, Six Flags, Pandora, Chick-fil-A, Catch.com.au, Facebook, and many more.
MyInterview
Stats:
- Over 2 million video interviews completed
- 60% faster time to hire
- 71% of interviews get done within 15 minutes
- They satisfy the rule of 40
MyInterview
Pricing:
myInterview has 5 available pricing plans:
- Starter: Free forever. 1 active job, 2 user seats, 30 candidates per year, basic features.
- Growth: $29 per month. 5 active jobs, 5 user seats, 960 candidates per year, upgraded features.
- Team: $85 per month. Most popular plan. 10 active jobs, 10 user seats, 3,600 candidates per year, all Growth features plus more.
- Performance: $225 per month. 24 active jobs, 15 user seats, 8,400 candidates per year, all Team features plus more.
- Enterprise: Custom pricing. Custom active jobs, user seats, candidates per year, all Performance features plus more.
Best For
myInterview could be a good fit for all sorts of companies in any industry, thanks to their flexible pricing plans and dynamic offering.
Worth Checking Out:
MyInterview uses a “glass box” approach to AI that endeavors to circumvent the bias in black box AI use.
Why we love it
:
Searchlight’s underlying philosophy is that you need to understand how talent does on the job in order to have a best in class assessment technology that gets smarter over time.
Searchlight
Review:
Searchlight is a talent assessment tool that allows PeopleOps teams to understand who to hire based on organizational psychology, AI, and actual employee performance data.
When you open a new req, you can choose from assessment templates within Searchlight, as well as customize your own. These assessments are sent out asynchronously to candidates, typically when they reach the final stages of the interview process.
Candidates answer questions about themselves, and also have three references to provide information relating to soft skills like coach-ability, work ethic, ability to learn, etc. 91% of third party references respond within 36 hours.
These data points are synthesized into a report that hiring managers use to understand who to hire. They are also sent to managers to help understand how to onboard this employee and where they may need help.
The secret sauce is that Searchlight has a 30/60/90 day review module which directly collects employee performance, and then uses this data to enhance assessments.
All this results in an average 45% decrease in employee attrition across their customer base. That is quite the ROI!
Searchlight
Customers:
Zapier
Udemy
Talkdesk
Doximity
Searchlight
Stats:
Customers see an average decrease in employee attrition of 45%
91% of third party references respond within 36 hours
Searchlight
Pricing:
Pricing is not disclosed as this is enterprise software. The company prices based on the number of hires you plan to make in a given year. The other major variable is the modules you plan to use.
Pricing starts around $12k/yr at the low end, and can get into the mid six figures for fast growing companies. We won’t be surprised to hear of companies paying in the seven figures, especially as more enterprise grade customers come on board.
Best For
Currently, their customer base is almost exclusively fast growing unicorn tech companies. Why is that? These tend to be the most sophisticated PeopleOps and Talent teams who are hungry for best in class technology.
However, that doesn’t mean this solution wouldn’t fit any company where talent is a priority. In fact, it’d be surprising if this product wasn’t more mass market in the years to come.
Worth Checking Out:
Why we love it
:
SparkHire is a video interview solution with capabilities for one-way video, live interviews, video messaging, and interview scheduling.
SparkHire
Review:
SparkHire is one of the most widely used video interview platforms out there, which automatically qualifies it as a top candidates screening tool. They also have a host of features around scheduling and evaluating candidates.
SparkHire
Customers:
SparkHire is used by brands like Volkswagen, IKEA, USPS, and BAE.
SparkHire
Stats:
- Over 6,000 customers
- Used by nearly 1,000 staffing agencies
SparkHire
Pricing:
SparkHire offers a 14-day free trial. After that, there are four plans:
- Starter is $199 per month for unlimited interviews for 1 job at a time with 3 users.
- Pro costs $249 per month with unlimited interviews for 5 jobs at a time with 5 users.
- Team and Enterprise plans are offered at custom pricing.
Best For
SparkHire is a good bet for companies of all sizes. Their starter plan and free trial could be particularly friendly for small businesses.
Worth Checking Out:
SparkHire has a great repository of case studies, many of which tie the work of human resources into the broader business goals of increasing revenues and decreasing costs.
Why we love it
:
Qualified’s online coding interview platform was born out of CodeWars, an ecosystem of 1 million developers working to improve their skills.
Qualified
Review:
Qualified’s is an enterprise-grade solutions and a developer-friendly way to assess technical skills. They stand out for having features like embed tests within your content, plagiarism check, and a developer profile generator.
Qualified
Customers:
Among the companies that trust Qualified with their developer assessment, you'll find names like Apple, Klarna, Domino's, Thinkful, Facebook, and Zoom.
Qualified
Stats:
- Assessments for over 28 programming languages
Qualified
Pricing:
Qualified has a free trial. Custom pricing would result from booking a 1:1 consultation with one of their experts.
Best For
Qualified is likely best for enterprise customers with heavy needs for developers.
Worth Checking Out:
This platform is all about using real world situations to vet whether an engineer is a good fit for your organization.
Why we love it
:
pymetrics uses AI to vet, assess, and manage candidates. Their algorithms can create an ideal persona for each role and determine which tests should be taken by potential matches.
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Pymetrics
Review:
pymetrics uses a series of games and exercises to understand a job seeker’s risk aversion, cognitive abilities, behavioral characteristics, and so much more. Your best employees are also mapped using similar criteria so that applicants can be matched with the appropriate role within your organization
Pymetrics
Customers:
The pymetrics approach is favored by organizations like Kraft Heinz, McDonald's, Colgate-Palmolive, and Boston Consulting Group.
Pymetrics
Stats:
- 20,000 employees assessed
- 4 custom models to identify good matches
- 5 generic models to identify future opportunities
- 92% candidate satisfaction rate
Best For
pymetrics is best for organizations that look at pools of candidates with at least 5,000 individuals.
Worth Checking Out:
Large enterprises like McDonald’s, BCG, and Unilever all use pymetrics for their hiring process.
Why we love it
:
eSkills is a comprehensive talent assessment platform with capabilities that cover the entire employee lifecycle, from pre-employment and video interview to behavioral development.
eSkill
Review:
eSkill helps organizations simplify their hiring process using pre-employment tests, behavioral assessments, and video interviews to screen applicants. HR managers can choose pre-prepared tests from eSkill’s extensive Test Library. Conversely, they can create customized assessments using questions from multiple tests along with their own questions. This helps them quickly identify top candidates as well as reduce hiring costs and expedite time-to-hire.
eSkill
Customers:
eSkill has clients worldwide in industries such as customer service, healthcare, manufacturing/industrial, and staffing. Some of its clients include Pepsi, LG, Zappos, Banner Health, and Randstad.
eSkill
Stats:
- Over 800 standard job-based & subject-based tests
- Choose from over 5,000 combinable topics
- Millions of candidates assessed over 15 years
- At OSF Global Services, their tests were instrumental in reducing recruitment costs and time-to-hire by over 60%.
eSkill
Pricing:
eSkill is priced in two ways, flat-rate annual subscriptions or pay-per-score package. The latter plan starts at $850 per score package, but the other plans, which go all the way to enterprise, have undisclosed pricing. Nevertheless, it is worth noting that all plans include the standard test library, custom test configuration, realistic simulation tests, validated content, 24/7 support, and a dedicated success manager.
Best For
Due to their varied pricing schemes, eSkills can be a great fit for companies of all kinds of sizes and budgets.
Worth Checking Out:
When you pay for score packages instead of a subscription, tests results are good for two years after purchase. Unused test results roll over to the next year in case you happen to buy more before the others expire.
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Candidate Assessment Software, Final Advice
Finding candidates with the right skill set who are also good culture fits ultimately leads to more organizational success and less attrition. With a candidate assessment tool, you can be more confident in your screening and hiring efforts and build a higher-performing company.
To find the right assessment tool for your needs, run an audit of your existing screening process to see what data you’re currently getting and/or prioritizing. From there, you can more easily identify which of the solutions here can take this screening work off of your recruiters’ plates and make your overall screening efforts more consistent and more efficient. At the end of the day, you want something that will make your job easier and your company more successful.
From here, it’s probably best to talk to 2-3 vendors about their solution and get a sense for how they would fit into what you are trying to accomplish with your program.
Best Employee Assessment Tools
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