The 5 best interpersonal skill pre-employment assessment platforms in 2023
Thoughtfully-crafted reviews and recommendations by experts about HireVue, Mettl, Harver, and TestGorilla
The pandemic forced interviewing to go remote which means that recruiting teams need technology that can help them evaluate candidates for both skill-sets and culture-fit. Evaluating interpersonal skills in particular is highly subjective, but there are several tools that can streamline the process and inform data-driven decision making.
Before deciding on a tool, you should consider which of the following factors matter most for your decision:
- Question library: Are you looking for basic interpersonal skill questions to supplement a technical interview or are you looking for comprehensive personality tests? Are you hiring for customer-facing roles or just to determine whether a candidate will work effectively on a team?
- Breadth of evaluation: Do you have definitively correct multiple choice questions or do you want to see and hear how a candidate would approach a real-life situation? Do you want them to interview asynchronously or synchronously?
- Automation and analysis: For qualitative answers, how do you plan to evaluate candidates? Do you have guardrails in place for legally using artificial intelligence to inform hiring decisions?
- Affordability: Do you know how many candidates you want to assess? Do you have an unlimited budget with deep-pocketed investors? Or are you trying to be cost-effective? Keep in mind that with all the layoffs happening, you will likely receive significantly more qualified candidates than ever before so should account for that as you price out various platforms.
With each of the above factors in mind, let’s review the best five platforms. There are certainly other impressive platforms out there, but given the range in services, feature set, and affordability of the platforms below, I can’t think of any legitimate reasons to use anything else.
HireVue
Website | Pricing ($$$$) | G2 Reviews
HireVue is one of the most well known platforms for talent evaluation, and is used by the largest employers in the world like Amazon. They offer a suite of communication and evaluation tools that integrate nicely with Applicant Tracking Systems.
Pros
- Full-suite: For virtually any type of candidate communication, HireVue has a powerful offering, including synchronous and asynchronous video interviews and personality and psychometric assessments.
- Library: HireVue has a massive library of game-based assessments. While there are widespread complaints from candidates about how the games and riddles affect their mental health, they are still very effective at filtering down from thousands of candidates to just a few. If you enjoyed Squid Game, you will love deploying game-based psychometric assessments in your hiring process.
- Integrations: When it comes to integrating with your enterprise-grade hiring stack, HireVue has a comprehensive list of partners.
- Services: If you don’t have the skillset or resources to configure an assessment process, HireVue offers professional services to do it on your behalf.
Cons
- Legal ramifications: The Washington Post reported that HireVue’s use of artificial intelligence was unethical and that experts found it “profoundly disturbing.” After a class-action lawsuit, HireVue deprecated some of its artificial intelligence capabilities and laid out ethical commitments to regain market trust.
- Shockingly expensive: HireVue begins at $35,000/yr for just their “essentials” plan.
Mettl
Website | Pricing ($) | G2 Reviews
With 6,000+ customers, Mettl has long been an industry leader in the pre-employment skill assessment industry. They take assessment science seriously, hiring talent from the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology in order to adhere to reliability and validity standards.
Pros
- Library: Mettl boasts a vast assessment library with 100,000+ ready-made questions across six assessment types — psychometric tests, behavioral tests, aptitude tests, coding tests, domain tests, and spoken English tests.
- All-in-one: Mettl can be used to evaluate both interpersonal skills and technical skills, with a fully-featured code editor.
- Proctoring technology: Mettl offers a full proctoring suite that can be used to automatically or manually detect cheating in real-time or in uploaded videos afterward.
Cons
- Cringey reporting: Despite Mettl’s accolades and credentials, some of the claims made in their reporting capabilities are suspect. Is it really possible to evaluate a candidate for “social desirability” or “drive”?
- Mettl doesn’t have a free trial or transparent pricing. You have to go through a lengthy sales process just to discover that it’s expensive and that the pricing often feels arbitrary (as in, another customer may be paying way more or less for the exact same limits). You will often have your pricing increased each year, sometimes by more than 100%.
Harver
Website | Pricing ($$$$) | G2 Reviews
Harver is another market leader in the pre-employment space with more types of pre-employment assessments and workflows than HireVue and Mettl. Harver is enterprise-focused and may be too expensive for most SMBs and startups.
Pros
- Full-suite: In addition to asyncronous assessments and real-time interviews, Harver also offers an automated reference check solution. They’re also continuously evolving and becoming a full applicant tracking system.
- Massive library: Harver has a massive library of behavioral assessments, in addition to cognitive tests, gamified tests, and job knowledge and soft skill assessments.
- Intuitive interface: From configuring assessments to analyzing results, Harver’s software is easy-to-use.
Cons
- Fewer integrations: Because Harver is trying to be an end-to-end applicant tracking system, their integrations are more limited than HireVue or Mettl.
- Expensive: HireVue doesn’t even list their price so you’ll have go through a lengthy sales process and negotiate a custom contract.
Website | Pricing ($$$) | G2 Reviews
As the newest entrant in the market, TestGorilla has quickly made a splash with a jaw-dropping question and assessment library for a wide variety of roles, and an interface that’s easy to use for admins and candidates alike.
Pros
- Library: TestGorilla has assessments for virtually everything, from personality and culture to cognitive ability. However, their assessments primarily consist of multiple choice questions which are surface-level and easy to cheat on.
- Ease of use: Because all the assessments are multiple choice questions in plain English, getting started for admins is very easy. The candidate experience is simple and predictable.
- Customization: From custom branding to creating custom questions with custom time limits, TestGorilla probably has the most customization options in the market.
- Ambitious roadmap: TestGorilla is very transparent about their recent product updates and upcoming priorities.
Cons
- No interviewing: If you want a platform for both assessments and real-time interviews, you’ll need to purchase a license from another vendor as well since TestGorilla only offers assessments.
- Confusing pricing: You need a PhD to understand their pricing page, which changes on an almost weekly basis (and sometimes even when you just reload the page). At first their plans seem affordable but most of the features and differences are not actually discernible until you become an expert user on the platform.
Coderbyte
Website | Pricing ($) | G2 Reviews
In the past two years, Coderbyte transformed from an assessment platform singularly focused on technical skills to evaluating a much broader array of skills. With 3,000 customers and an affordable unlimited candidate and admin plan, organizations might find that Coderbyte meets their needs better.
Pros
- Multiple question types: Coderbyte offers more question types than other platforms. You can use multiple choice questions and open-ended questions with optional video responses, along with their full suite of coding question types for front-end challenges, back-end challenges, full-stack multi-file project-based challenges, database challenges, and use unit tests for grading.
- Candidate experience: Coderbyte has long been a pioneer when it comes to candidate assessments, providing features and best practices to reinforce employer branding and advocate for more transparent recruiting practices. To that end, two notable features are the ability to compensate candidates with one-click and the ability to anonymize reports to eliminate internal bias with regard to recruiting decision-making.
- Advanced reporting: Each assessment includes an individualized report per candidate with overall and breakdown scores, skill ratings, scorecards completed by your team, and custom notes.
- Affordability: Coderbyte offers the industry’s only unlimited candidate and admin plan, and it’s just $199/month plus you get a 14-day free trial.
Cons
- Limited library for interpersonal skills: Coderbyte has a large library of technical challenges but few questions related to interpersonal and psychometric skills. You do have the ability to create your own, but other platforms will typically offer larger libraries.
- In order to ensure the industry’s best reputation for candidate experience, Coderbyte takes a firm stand against video proctoring. You cannot use Coderbyte to activate the candidate’s webcam and intimidate them while they take an assessment.
