The Top Candidate Assessment Tools — January 2020

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:

1. Connect your ATS so when new people apply they are sent the right assessment
2. Create assessments for key roles
3. Create messaging for candidates
4. Train your recruiting team on how to access and evaluate the assessments
5. 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.