Top 5 skills assessment tools to hire the best talent

Navigating the world of skills assessment tools can sometimes feel like trying to solve a Rubik's Cube blindfolded. There are lots of different skills assessment tools you can use, and countless software providers – each with its own methodology and test types. 

In this article, we’ll explore the top five skills assessment tools you can use in your hiring process – TestGorilla, Mercer Mettl, eSkill, iMocha, Codility – to see who would benefit most from each one and help you pick the right one for your recruitment needs.

What are skills assessment tools? 

Skills assessment tools are software platforms designed to help you evaluate candidates’ skills during the hiring process. 

They usually feature a range of skills tests for different types of competencies, such as technical skills, language proficiency, cognitive abilities, and more. Many of them also feature some form of soft skills tests, for example for communication or problem solving skills.

The best skills assessment tools out there offer wide a range of features catering to the needs of hiring managers and teams, such as: 

• Ready-to-use skills tests

• Customizable assessments

• Asynchronous video interviews 

• Automated scoring and reporting

• Anti-cheating measures

• Integration with other HRIS software

They’re a key part of the modern organization’s recruitment funnel, because they provide a way to measure candidates’ abilities quickly and objectively and assess their strengths and weaknesses without bias. 

An increasing number of companies are replacing outdated resume screening processes with skills-based hiring – according to our data, 70% of employers believe skills assessments give a more accurate idea of an applicant’s abilities than their resume.

What key features should you look for in a skills assessment tool? 

When choosing a skills assessment tool for your hiring team, it’s important to assess each platform in depth to see if it meets your requirements. Here are the most important features to consider: 

• Extensive test library: The tool you pick should have a wide range of tests covering various skills, including cognitive abilities, role-specific skills, programming skills, language proficiency, and more. A comprehensive test library will enable you to assess applicants’ skill sets accurately and see who meets your hiring criteria.

• Customizability: The ability to customize tests is vital, because it enables you to tailor each assessment to match your requirements. Additionally, being able to add your employer branding to assessments will help improve the candidate experience.

• Detailed reporting and analytics: Pick a tool that provides in-depth analytics and reports to give you a clear idea of all candidates’ strengths, weaknesses, and areas for development. Make sure that the platform you choose enables you to easily compare applicants, too. 

• Reliability and validity: Next, you need to ensure that the tests are scientifically validated and reliable. This means they should consistently produce accurate results and measure what they are intended to measure.

• User-friendly interface: Nothing’s worse than a platform that’s packed with top-notch features that you cannot use, simply because it’s too complex – and you can be sure that your hiring team won’t use it either. Pick a skills assessment tool that’s easy to navigate for both hiring teams and candidates.

• Integration capabilities: Find a tool that you can easily integrate into your HR tech stack to streamline your workflows rather than make them more complicated. 

• Scope: Recruitment is just one of the potential uses of skills assessment tools – the right platform can support your talent management, learning and development, and succession planning initiatives, too. Ideally, pick a skills assessment tool that can help you with any of those things – even if you don’t need it now, you might need it in the future. 

Top 5 skills assessment tools – and how to pick the best one

Let’s now look at the top five skills assessment tools on the market and see what each one has to offer. 

1. TestGorilla

TestGorilla is a pre-employment testing platform that enables you to evaluate your applicants’ skills quickly, accurately, and objectively, thus reducing your time to hire and eliminating unconscious bias. 

With our platform, you can build skills assessments of up to five skills tests from the following categories: 

• Cognitive ability

• Language

• Personality and culture

• Programming skills

• Role-specific skills

• Situational judgment

• Software skills

• Typing speed

This enables you to gain a 360-degree view of each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses and compare your talent to see who best meets your hiring needs. 

On our platform, you can either create your own tests or use our ready-to-use tests from our test library. When creating a test, you can define the questions yourself, and ask candidates to provide a video response, write an essay, or upload a file. The only constraint to using custom-made questions is the fact that clients need to then rate them manually. 

Most tests take 10 minutes to complete, meaning that a skills assessment will take under an hour of an applicant’s time. You can also add your employer branding to your assessments, along with an intro and outro video, which helps you create a more memorable candidate experience. 

If you use TestGorilla, you’ll no longer need to engage in lengthy resume screening processes but will, instead, have an accurate idea of each candidate’s skills. 

Pros: 

• A large test library of over 400 skills tests

• Asynchronous video interviews

• Fully customizable assessments

• Strong anti-cheating measures

Cons: 

• No one-on-one video interviews

Free version: Yes, free forever plan with five skills tests

Pricing: Comprehensive plans starting from $499/month, with three pricing tiers

Best for: Companies of any size with broad pre-employment testing needs

Our verdict: 

With its 400 skills tests (and counting), TestGorilla is the best choice if you need to hire for a range of roles and skills – including technical roles. 

We’re constantly upgrading our platform and improving our tests to provide you with the best hiring experience – and help you make objective hiring decisions, fast. 

2. Mercer Mettl

Mercer Mettl is an online talent assessment and proctoring company that offers a suite of tools and services for talent acquisition, management, and development. The platform provides a range of online skills assessments to help employers evaluate applicants’: 

• Core traits with cognitive-ability, personality, and behavioral tests

• Acquired skills with assessments on coding skills, role-specific abilities, and communication

You can use the platform to create customized assessments and invite any number of candidates to take them. As soon as a candidate finishes a test, you get their results, and you can use the platform’s dashboard to compare applications. 

There’s also a remote proctoring suite you can use to minimize the risk of applicants cheating on their tests. 

Mercer Mettl has fewer tests than TestGorilla (200 compared to 400) and you can’t combine multiple tests per assessment. The platform’s pricing is not transparent and users have complained that expired credits cost a lot to renew.

Pros: 

• A wide range of scientifically-validated tests that help reduce bias

• Proctoring features to limit cheating

• Mobile-friendly

Cons: 

• Not possible to add an intro and outro video

• No qualifying questions prior to candidates taking the test

Free version: No

Pricing: No pricing details on the website; you need to speak to Mercer Mettl’s sales team

Best for: Companies looking to streamline hiring; educational institutions

Our verdict:

Mercer Mettl is a robust platform that offers a wide range of skills tests for soft and technical abilities. It’s also a good choice for educational institutions thanks to its strong proctoring measures.

3. eSkill

eSkill is an online skills assessment tool that offers a wide range of customizable tests to evaluate candidates' abilities and fit for various job roles. 

The platform is known for its flexibility, allowing users to mix and match questions from different tests or create entirely new tests tailored to specific job requirements. This is also what makes it a bit difficult to get started with – the sheer number of options available might feel overwhelming at first. 

The platform can be used in different industries, including IT, healthcare, education, and customer service. It also offers integrations with popular applicant tracking systems (ATS), enhancing its utility in streamlined recruitment processes.

Pros: 

• Customizable tests you can adapt to your role

• Integrations with the most popular ATS tools

• Easy to use for test-takers and employers

Cons: 

• No free version

• Pricing information is not available on the website

Free version: No

Pricing: Not publicly available, you need to contact eSkill’s team

Best for: Medium to large companies

Our verdict: 

eSkill features an impressive array of pre-employment tests but it can’t meet TestGorilla’s customization options. Plus, its lack of free version makes it inaccessible for small teams that need to test out a few platforms or have limited hiring needs. 

4. iMocha

iMocha is an AI-powered skill assessment tool for pre-employment screening, employee benchmarking, and skills gap analysis. 

It has live-coding interviews, an extensive test library, and the option to add your employer branding to tests. The platform covers multiple industries (referred to as taxonomies) and roles and enables users to create customizable tests – and it also integrates well with popular applicant tracking systems and other HR tools.

iMocha has video recording capabilities but it doesn’t count or limit candidates’ attempts at video answers, contrary to TestGorilla. You also cannot invite multiple candidates at once to an assessment. 

Pros: 

• Large test library and customizable tests

• AI-enabled features like coding interviews

• Strong analytics and reporting capabilities

Cons:

• Its learning curve is somewhat steep 

• The platform is focused on technical roles, which might limit its use by non-tech companies

• No pricing information available on the website

Free version: No 

Pricing: Custom pricing; you need to contact iMocha’s sales team to get a quote

Best for: Tech companies looking to hire at scale

Our verdict:

iMocha is a good choice for companies looking to recruit for tech roles, but it might be of limited use for other roles. It also doesn’t have a system for the continuous reviewing of tests but only relies on customer feedback to identify problems.

5. Codility

Codility is a specialized online platform that focuses on testing the technical skills of software developers, making it a comprehensive solution for technical recruitment. It offers a series of timed coding tasks and algorithmic challenges designed to mimic real-life scenarios that developers might encounter in their work.

The platform can help screen large volumes of candidates, making it a good choice for tech companies that are looking to scale rapidly. Non-technical recruiters might need more time to figure out the features of the platform. 

Pros: 

• Extensive coding test library

• Live coding interview tool 

• Customizable coding tests that companies can tailor to their specific technological stack and project requirements

Cons:

• Limited to technical roles; not suitable for non-technical positions

• Steep learning curve for non-technical recruiters

Free version: No free version; users can get a free trial

Pricing: No pricing information on the website

Best for: Technology companies looking to hire software developers and engineers

Our verdict: 

Codility is a good choice for companies looking to hire for roles such as front and back end developers, QA testers, and software architects – but not for other, non-technical roles. 

TestGorilla’s test quality and test types: What’s in it for you

TestGorilla is one of the best skills assessment tools out there – and the quality and variety of our tests are key for this. 

At the moment, we offer eight different test types, which you can use to test for any role and for any level, from interns to managers and from blue-collar workers to C-Suite executives. 

Our tests are developed by subject-matter experts and peer-reviewed by a second expert.

Afterward, they’re further fine-tuned and calibrated, based on the actual performance of the people who take the test. We make sure the tests aren’t too easy or too difficult, and that they’re accurate and reliable in predicting future performance. 

Overall, we use a few rules to determine the quality of tests. We’re looking for questions which: 

• Are clear and easy to understand

• Are up-to-date and reflect any recent developments in the area or subject 

• Provide enough information to give an accurate answer

• Cover each subject in sufficient depth to be able to make an accurate assessment of the candidate’s skills

• Aren’t too easy or too difficult

Additionally, you have the option to create your own tests and send them to candidates.

Here are the test types we offer: 

Cognitive ability tests

Cognitive ability tests enable you to assess your candidates’ cognitive, analytical and reasoning skills, such as attention to detail, critical thinking, problem solving, verbal reasoning, and more. 

They’re not role-specific, so you can use them in addition to other, more specialized tests. When used in combination, they allow you to get a clearer picture of your applicants’ ability to understand and perform complex tasks and tackle issues successfully. 

Language tests

With our language tests, you can assess your candidates’ language proficiency by testing their reading and listening comprehension, grammar, sentence composition and vocabulary in different languages, including French, Spanish, Dutch, and Mandarin, and at different levels. 

Personality and culture tests 

Experienced HR managers know that assessing applicants’ personality and cultural alignment is as important as assessing role-specific skills. 

Culture tests, such as our Culture Add test, help you guarantee that you’re hiring a diverse and inclusive workforce. Personality assessments help you find the right fit for your team, based on your candidates’ character traits, such as openness, extraversion, and emotional stability (as in the Big 5 OCEAN test). 

Programming skills tests

It’s notoriously difficult to hire talented programmers. After all, how can you test for highly technical and specialized roles with confidence, given that it’s nearly impossible to keep up with recent developments and best practices in programming and software development? 

Programming skills tests allow you to compare applicants’ skills in different programming languages and frameworks. With our programming skills tests, you can test for entry-level algorithms in JavaScript, React, Django REST Framework (DRF), Flutter, and more.   

Role-specific skills tests

Role specific skills tests allow you to test your candidates’ capabilities in relation to the requirements for the specific role you’re looking to fill, such as a financial controller or project manager.

Role specific tests give you granular details of your applicants’ performance and compare them side-by-side. 

They’re also a solid predictor of the future success of candidates, and you can combine them with personality and culture or cognitive ability tests to get a good overall picture of each candidate’s strengths and weaknesses. 

Situational judgment tests

Situational judgment tests help you assess the situational judgment capabilities of candidates and their capacity to navigate complex business situations and environments. 

They cover areas of advanced expertise such as negotiation, leadership and people management, and business ethics and compliance, but also skills such as communication and time management. 

You can use them in combination with other, more specific tests, and they might be particularly relevant for fast-paced work environments in which employees need to make the right decisions under stress. 

Software skills tests

This type of test enables you to assess your candidates’ software skills and the ease with which they use different enterprise software solutions, and determine whether they’re proficient with the tools they’d need to use in the role you’re looking to fill. 

Examples of software skills you can test for include Google Analytics, Microsoft Azure, Zendesk CS, and more. 

Typing speed tests

We’ve recently developed and added a few tests to assess candidates’ typing speed, which is key in roles where employees spend a big chunk of their time typing. In fast-paced environments, typing speed can make a big difference in a person’s productivity and even in their ability to complete the work. 

We have four typing speed tests you can use to evaluate your applicants’ typing speed, including a Lowercase-only test and a Capitalization and Punctuation test. 

Streamline your hiring process with a data-driven approach 

Skills assessment tools are an essential element of every successful recruiter’s toolbox; they enable you to make hiring decisions that are accurate, objective, and unbiased.

At TestGorilla, we’re all about data and objectivity. We want to make sure our clients are able to pick the best candidate each time, and have an accurate estimation of their future performance and chances of success.

That’s why we’ve developed a skills assessment tool that makes it easy to make data-driven, unbiased hires. Due to its exceptional versatility and customization options, TestGorilla is the best pre-employment screening platform for most companies out there.

Sign up for our free trial to see how we can help you identify the best candidates and make your hiring decisions faster, easier, and bias-free – or sign up for a free demo to talk to one of our experts.