The Top Pre-Employment Assessment Tools — 2023

Pre-employment screening is a necessary task for any talent acquisition team.  You want to find candidates with the right skills who also fit in well with your company culture so they’ll succeed AND stay.  You also want to understand how to best manage them so they stay motivated and are set up for success from day one.  Of course, recruiting teams want to do all this in the most efficient way possible so you can keep growing your team without wasting time or money.

Hiring assessment tools are a great way to streamline your evaluation of job seekers, and save your team time. Still not sure? In addition to the obvious use cases (like assessing skills, culture fit, and tech and cognitive abilities) there are an array of other reasons to consider adding this tool to your recruitment efforts:

• Narrow  the candidate pool by focusing on skills. Get a better sense of who is actually qualified for the job in question by focusing on their skills. When you go into any hiring process with skills in mind, you let the candidate and his or her aptitude shine — not their resume. So see which candidates have the necessary skills for a job and focus on bringing them in for interviews. You’ll save a lot of time in the process.
• Make final hiring decisions with confidence. An objective test from a pre-employment screening solution can provide conviction that you are making the right decision when it comes to hiring.  This is similar to how SAT scores can give college admissions confidence in making the decision on an applicant.  Of course, just like the SATs, there are imperfections in the signal provided from these tools and so it is just one piece of the puzzle.
• Predict job performance and culture fit. Assessments will help you determine if someone has the right skills, but that’s not all. You can also get a sense for how a candidate is likely to fit into your organization’s culture. This is a major benefit because if they’re a good culture fit, they’re more likely to succeed in their roles and stay at the company longer.
• Prepare managers more effectively. Analyze behavioral screening results to understand how people tick — what behaviors do they generally exhibit? How do they tend to approach their work/tasks? Not just how good are they likely to be in their role, but what motivates them to actually do their best? Understanding this type of information will allow you to better prepare their managers for onboarding and beyond.
• Create diverse and higher functioning teams. By using data to focus on actual skills and fit, you’ll more objectively screen candidates and ultimately build a more diverse and successful workforce. Not only that, you’ll be able to use candidate and people data to understand how a candidate will fit into a specific team, and how that team will ultimately work together.

Candidate assessment tools aren’t perfect and no implementation process is either. But when you can anticipate challenges and create solutions before there’s a problem, you maximize your chances of a straightforward and seamless integration. To help you be better prepared, we’ve outlined common pitfalls and mistakes that talent acquisition teams experience while using candidate assessment tools. Taking these to heart will ensure that you use your tool most effectively:

• Biased scoring: As we mentioned, candidate assessment tools can help you eliminate unconscious bias — that is, if their algorithms are impartial. Just like SAT scores correlate with household wealth, hiring assessment tools can provide false signals that don’t mirror a candidate’s aptitude alone.  If you do implement a new solution, take a look how candidates from different backgrounds are scoring, and be aware that you may be penalizing job seekers who’d actually be a good fit.
• AI and video don’t really work together: Video submissions should really be scored by a human. If you use AI to vet candidates’ videos, you could run into issues with bias against women, people of color, other underrepresented people, even introverted people. This is because there could be unconscious bias baked into the AI itself — so make sure that an actual human is screening and scoring video interview submissions. Also, remember that some candidates might not be comfortable on camera, which could increase someone’s nerves, etc.
• Automation only goes so far: You can’t deny that hiring is a personal experience. As great as automation is, it’s not personal. You simply can’t make a fully confident hiring decision on data alone, so supplement the work your screening tool is doing with actual face to face interviews — just save those interviews for the most promising candidates.
• Know what skills are tested before you invest: Many tools are designed solely for technical roles and only test for things like coding skills. If you’re looking for a broader range of skill sets, make sure you understand what skills your preferred tool covers before you invest. Keep in mind that you can’t test for everything. For example, trade skills like plumbing or operating a forklift can’t be tested using a computer. If you need to hire a tradesperson, do some research on the certifications they’d need or see if there are specific skills tests you can have them take as part of your screening efforts.
• Eliminate barriers to entry: To get candidates to actually take the skills tests you want, you have to make it easy for them to do so. That means starting the assessments with easy questions first, and making any pre-employment test easy to take on a mobile phone.
• Ask candidates for feedback: At the end of the assessment process, gather feedback from candidates so you can see how everything was received, if there is room for improvement anywhere, etc.

If you have follow-up questions on any of these points, you might be able to get more clarity during your demos. So write down your questions then continue to the next section to see what else to ask.

At the end of the day, candidate assessment tools can help recruiters and hiring managers do their jobs better, which means your company will do its job better. Here’s how:

• Better productivity: Recruiters will spend less time on screening and administering standard assessments, so they can focus their time on the most promising candidates.
• Unbiased process for screening: Studies show that diverse teams perform better. When you use a data-driven tool for screening, you take away bias and focus on skills and fit. The result is more diversity across gender, ethnicity, experience, and more.
• More scalable screening: You can screen more people in less time, allowing you to weed out unqualified applicants quickly, create talent pools for future roles, and more.
• Faster time to fill roles: When you can more quickly screen more people, you can more quickly find promising candidates and begin the interview process with them.
• Organizational success: With the help of a top candidate assessment tool, you are more likely to find the best talent and hire someone who is right for the job and your company — all of which leads to higher performing teams and a more successful organization.

To help you calculate how all these benefits translate to a positive return on investment, check out our ROI calculator for candidate assessment tools. It covers a variety of key points, including:

• How to measure increases in recruiter productivity
• How faster hiring affects your organization
• How software tools can decrease large agency fees to save you money

As with most software platforms, pricing for hiring evaluation software depends on a number of factors. These tools either charge per hire, per assessment, or on a subscription basis. Personally, we like the per hire model because this incentivizes you to put all candidates through the tool which will eventually uncover diamonds in the rough vs a per assessment pricing model that means you have to be more judicious about which candidates to use the tool with.

As you evaluate different tools, pay attention to how their pricing works (i.e. if it’s per hire, assessment, or by subscription) and match that to how many jobs you need to fill over the course of a month or year. If you only have a couple per month, then a per-hire or per-assessment might make more sense. On the flip side, if you’re filling a lot of roles and conducting a lot of assessments, a subscription model might be a better deal.

As we’ve mentioned, pre-employment screening will help you more productively find top talent and build high-performing teams. How they do that depends on their features. While each tool differs slightly, you can expect to see most or all of the following:

• Video interviews: In person interviews are great but there simply isn’t enough time to meet with every candidate face to face at the screening phase. Conducting video interviews can save you a lot of time. Not only that, you’ll get a sense for how candidates communicate by watching recorded video responses to your screening questions.  We have an entire page dedicated to the best video interview platforms.
• Coding assessments: Test candidates’ coding abilities and overall technical skills to see if they’re even qualified for an in-person interview. You can give everything from pre-screens to full scale coding projects that mirror the work they’d be doing as an employee.
• Skills assessments: Test job-specific skills, general work skills, and/or soft skills to get a sense for how a candidate might perform in the role. The skills tests you administer could include text, multiple choice or video questions, document editing, code editing, and more.
• Cognitive screening: Assess how someone thinks, problem solves and learns new things. Using this information can help you understand how to manage them and prepare them for success in their new role.
• Psychographic screening: Understand a candidate’s personality traits, including their values and interests. This can help you determine how they’ll fit into a specific team as well as your company’s overall culture.
• Employer branding: In addition to using your company branding (like logo, messaging and voice), you can infuse your employer branding as well throughout your assessments. That means inserting information about what it’s like to work at your company and why a candidate should want to work there. This is especially important because candidates are likely applying to other companies, so you want yours to stand out.
• ATS integration: Sync your applicant tracking system with your candidate assessment tool to more seamlessly run your recruiting, screening and hiring efforts.
• Library of potential questions: If you need help coming up with individual questions or full skills assessments, you can pull from a library of content and then customize that content as you see fit. Or, if you already have your testing content created, you can just use that.
• Bias-free screening: Eliminate unconscious bias around gender, ethnicity, credentials, education, etc. and focus instead on someone’s actual skills. When you make fair and objective hiring decisions, your organization is better primed for success.
• Talent pools: If you’ve screened a candidate who scored well for culture fit and soft skills but didn’t have the technical skill set required for the role they wanted, keep them in a talent pool until a better suited position opens up for them.
• AI-powered candidate ranking: Many tools grade and stack-rank your candidates based on their results so you can evaluate them more efficiently and be confident that you’re only focusing on the best.
• Reporting and insights: Get data on which candidate sourcing methods perform better than others, understand completion rates and times, then make any necessary adjustments accordingly.
• NPS/feedback surveys to candidates: Get direct feedback from your candidates on how your interview/screening process is to better understand where you might need to make improvements.

Demos are very important as you do your own assessment of these candidate screening tools. To make sure you get the most of your demos, prepare a list of questions specific to your screening and hiring needs, the use-cases that matter most to you, and how your overall HR tech stack might be affected. And be upfront about what you want to get out of the demo so the person on the other end doesn’t waste your (or their own) time.

So what questions should you ask? Generally speaking, you should always be thinking about the following questions when you’re considering any new software program:

• How will this solution fit into the rest of my tech stack? What integrations do I need?
• How will others in the organization use this solution?
• What are the key features I want to ask about?
• What are the things that would make me nervous about buying this sort of solution?
• How does pricing work?
• What implementation guidelines do they suggest?

For candidate assessment tools specifically, here are some questions to cover:

• What ATSs do you integrate with? How long does this take?
• How do I build new screens?
• What are your best practices for screens for my type of roles?
• How are candidate responses reviewed?
• What employer branding can I put into this process?
• What percent of candidates accept the screen? Does that differ by role or source of candidate?
• What is your candidate NPS?
• Do you have a team that can help me map my current screening to your tool?
• What types of screens do you focus on (skills, tech, psychographic, etc.)?

Tee vast majority of these candidate assessment tools are cloud-based so you won’t have to manage a technical or complicated implementation process. In fact, onboarding can be pretty simple. Focusing on these three things will help you maximize success:

• Connect your ATS so when new people apply they are sent the right assessment
• Create assessments for key roles
• Create messaging for candidates
• Train your recruiting team on how to access and evaluate the assessments
• Create a workflow that pushes passed applicants into the next round of interviews

If you discover during your demo that your implementation might be more complicated, make sure to get a clear picture of what you’ll need from the vendor’s account management team, along with a customer reference call. This means understanding any tech requirements and, depending on the scope of the implementation, electing a project manager to run point, keep the team focused, and communicate updates regularly to key stakeholders.

What is pre-employment assessment? 

Pre-employee assessment is the process of evaluating a candidate before hiring through skills tests, behavioral assessments, and video interviews. 

What is a pre-employment assessment tool? 

A pre-employment assessment tool is a software solution designed to customize, administer, analyze, and report different types of test results to a hiring team to make better hiring decisions. 

Why use a pre-employment assessment tool? 

Your company can use a pre-employment assessment tool to make more informed hiring decisions that will bring in better candidates. You’ll be able to narrow your candidate pool, make more confident hiring decisions, predict job performance, find better culture fit candidates, and create diverse and higher functioning teams. 

What are some benefits of using a pre-employment screening tool? 

Benefits of using a pre-employment screening tool include:

• Better productivity
• Unbiased screening process
• More scalable screening
• Faster time to fill roles
• Success for whole organization
  

What are the different types of pre-employment assessment tools?

There are a few different types of pre-employment assessment tools, such as:

• Video interviews
• Coding assessments
• Skills assessments
• Cognitive screening
• Psychographic screening
  

What features do pre-employment assessments tools offer?

There are many great features that pre-employment assessment tools offer companies. You will get ATS integration, larger talent pools, AI-powered candidate ranking, detailed insights and reporting, feedback surveys, and bias free screening.

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.