8 Best Pre-Employment Assessment Tools for Smart Hiring in 2024

According to a survey by CareerBuilder, bad hires cost businesses as much as $17,000/year. 

That’s definitely not what you’d want to face.

Don’t worry. There are robust pre-employment assessment tools you can use to get the best employees for your organization.

But which hiring assessment tools offer the best results?

Being a part of the SaaS industry for the past decade, I’ve been researching the topic for a while now and have come up with a list of the 8 best pre-employment assessment tools.

Let’s check them out.

Best Pre-Employment Assessment Tools in 2024

1. ProProfs Quiz Maker Easily Creating Secure Quizzes & Assessments With AI or Templates

ProProfs Quiz Maker is my favorite pre-employment assessment tool and the one I’ve used the longest. It has an advanced AI assessment generator and hundreds of ready-to-use skill and psychographic assessments designed by subject matter experts. 

You can use this tool to create a quiz on any topic in just a few seconds. All you need to do is provide the topic and choose the question formats and difficulty level. It offers 15+ question types and extensive customization options to tailor the quiz to your requirements.

You can also create video interview quizzes to interview job candidates remotely in a flexible and convenient way.

I also like its library of 1,000,000+ ready-to-use questions, the wide variety of security and anti-cheating features, and the detailed reporting and analytics.

What You Will Like:

• 15+ question types, including video-response, to create engaging and effective assessments
• Automated grading and scoring features to get instant results
• You can create personality quizzes to assess a candidate’s personality and work culture fit.
• 100+ security settings, including password protection, proctoring, shuffling, tab switching prevention, question pooling, and more to keep your assessments cheat-free
• Allows you to create questions in an Excel document and bulk-upload them into your quiz

What You May Not Like:

• The free version contains advertisements and doesn’t offer reporting features.
• It doesn’t support a dark mode option for quiz takers.

Price: Forever FREE for short quizzes and all essential features. Paid starts at $19.99/month.

2. TestGorilla Best for Aptitude & Psychometric Assessments

(Image Source: Smart Recruiters)

TestGorilla is one of the leading hiring assessment tools, and it excels in providing comprehensive aptitude and psychometric assessments, delving into candidates’ cognitive abilities and personality traits. 

I like its extensive library of pre-built assessments, and the platform ensures a holistic candidate evaluation process. 

These tests are scientifically validated and provide an in-depth assessment of candidates’ aptitude, enabling employers to make informed hiring decisions. The assessments are designed to be engaging and user-friendly, ensuring a positive candidate experience.

What You Will Like:

• AI-driven adaptive testing that ensures accurate assessments tailored to individual abilities.
• Benchmarking against industry standards to provide valuable context for candidate performance.
• Video-based scenarios for real-world simulations, enhancing assessment authenticity.
• User-friendly interface caters to both candidates and recruiters, facilitating a seamless experience.
• In-depth analytics and reporting features to get actionable insights for decision-making.

What You May Not Like:

• Limited customization options for assessments that restrict tailoring to specific organizational needs.
• Advanced features require additional costs, potentially impacting the overall budget.

Price: Starts at $499/month. Billed annually.

Read: Top 7 TestGorilla Alternatives in 2024

3. Criteria Corp Best for Personality Assessments

(Image Source: Criteria Corp)

Criteria Corp is a pre-employment assessment tool that excels in personality assessments, providing valuable insights into candidates’ behavioral traits and suitability for specific roles. 

The platform offers scientifically validated assessments with customizable personality profiles, ensuring a good understanding of candidates’ potential contributions.

The use of validated personality scales and benchmarks to provide accurate insights into candidates’ personality traits is something that I love about this tool. These assessments are valuable in evaluating candidates’ fit for specific roles and the organization’s culture.

What You Will Like:

• Customizable personality profiles for different roles enable tailored evaluations.
• Predictive analytics tools offer valuable insights into candidates’ potential future performance.
• Seamless integration with popular ATS platforms to ensure a streamlined assessment process.
• Real-time collaboration features facilitate team assessments, promoting a collaborative hiring approach.
• Personalized reports that offer insights into their behavioral traits, communication style, and cultural fit within an organization.

What You May Not Like:

• Limited language options make it unsuitable for international recruitment.
• Advanced reporting features necessitate additional training for optimal utilization.

Price: Custom pricing.

4. Harver Best for Gamified Assessments

(Image Source: iPrep)

Harver is one of my favorite pre-employment assessment tools. Its innovative gamified assessments offer an engaging and immersive hiring experience. 

Through these assessments, employers can evaluate candidates’ skills, behaviors, and cultural fit in a fun and immersive way. The gamified assessments provide an engaging candidate experience while still providing valuable insights to employers.

It lets you incorporate behavioral insights, customizable games, and AI-driven scoring and also ensures a comprehensive evaluation of candidates’ potential cultural fit and skills.

What You Will Like:

• Real-time analytics and progress tracking to facilitate data-driven decision-making.
• Mobile-friendly design to enable candidates to participate in assessments conveniently.
• Integration capabilities with major HR systems to streamline the overall recruitment process.
• Lets you create custom assessments tailored to specific job roles.
• Choose from over 35 gamified tests covering cognitive abilities, personality traits, situational judgment, and more.

What You May Not Like:

• The initial setup of the tools involves a learning curve.
• Limited customization for certain gamified assessments limits their applicability to specific roles.

Price: Starts at €500 for 10 candidates. 

5. HireVue Best for Video Assessments

(Image Source: HireVue)

HireVue is one of the best pre-employment video assessment tools, which provides a platform for recruiters to evaluate candidates beyond the constraints of a traditional resume. 

You can choose from 30+ video tests covering communication, presentation, problem-solving, and more. 

I tried the on-demand and live video interview options, which worked well. Besides, it offers AI-powered analysis and seamless integration with ATS and HRIS tools to offer better outcomes in the screening process.

What You Will Like:

• Customizable interview templates that cater to different job roles and organizational needs.
• Tools to analyze candidate behavior during interviews, assessing traits such as communication skills, problem-solving abilities, and cultural fit. 
• Features to schedule interviews and coordinate the logistics of the hiring process for streamlining the overall recruitment workflow.
• Allows recruiters and hiring managers to provide feedback and rate candidate responses.
• Offers mobile compatibility, allowing candidates to complete assessments or interviews using their smartphones or tablets.

What You May Not Like:

• Bandwidth and technical issues cause troubles in the quality of video interviews.
• It follows a standardized format, limiting the ability to personalize the interview experience.

Price: Starts at $35,000 for 2500-5000 employees. 

6. Vervoe Best for Template-Based Assessments

(Image Source: Vervoe)

Vervoe specializes in template-based assessments, providing standardized evaluations for various skills and competencies. 

You can choose from 500+ ready-made templates covering various skills, industries, and job roles. You can also create your own custom templates using Vervoe’s easy-to-use template builder.

With these pre-built templates, the platform offers real-world simulations and collaborative features for practical and effective candidate evaluations.

The tool also contains automated screening and ranking features that streamline the hiring process and provide valuable insights into candidate performance.

What You Will Like:

• Real-world simulations that offer practical evaluations and enhance the relevance of assessments.
• AI-driven skill assessments to ensure accurate and objective evaluations of candidates.
• Customizable assessments allow tailoring to specific roles and organizational needs.
• In-depth performance analytics offer detailed insights into candidate capabilities.
• You can engage multiple team members in the assessment process, giving them access to candidate responses and allowing them to provide feedback in real time.

What You May Not Like:

• The user interface is complex and lacks intuitive features, which can involve a learning curve.
• The simulations don’t fully capture the complexity of certain job functions and limit their effectiveness for assessment in specific contexts.

Price: Starts at $228/year for up to 100 candidates. 

7. iMocha Best for Coding & Technical Assessments

(Image Source: iMocha)

iMocha is a popular pre-employment assessment tool that helps you evaluate candidates based on their coding and technical skills to ensure a thorough evaluation of their programming skills. 

What I really like about the tool is that it provides a coding simulator with real-time coding environments and automated evaluation of coding assessments. No wonder this ensures efficient and accurate assessment of candidates’ technical capabilities.

It even lets employers benchmark candidates’ performance against industry standards or their internal benchmarks. This comparative analysis helps in identifying top candidates more effectively.

What You Will Like:

• Adaptive online testing software that ensures accurate evaluation of candidates’ skill levels.
• Real-time coding evaluations to get immediate insights into candidates’ capabilities.
• Integration with popular coding platforms enhances the efficiency of technical assessments.
• AI-driven plagiarism detection ensures the integrity of the assessment process.
• Skill-wise analytics and reporting features to get targeted insights for informed hiring decisions.

What You May Not Like:

• Limited non-technical assessments that restrict the platform’s applicability to certain roles.
• Challenges in designing assessments that require hands-on or practical skills. 

Price: Starts at $50/user. Billed annually. 

8. Adaface Best for Skill-Based Assessments

(Image Source: Adaface)

Adaface is a hiring assessment tool that specializes in skill-based quizzes. These quizzes offer a detailed evaluation of candidates’ practical abilities and help make better hiring decisions. 

The platform has a huge library that includes a wide range of skill-based pre-employment assessments tailored to various job roles in technology. 

These assessments assess candidates’ technical skills and knowledge through real-time coding environments, adaptive assessments, and automated evaluation. 

I also like its features for scheduling interviews and automating parts of the recruitment process. This can help streamline the hiring process and save time for both recruiters and candidates.

What You Will Like:

• Technical screening tools to identify candidates with the necessary technical skills.
• Uses artificial intelligence to assess and evaluate candidate responses during coding solutions and problem-solving approaches.
• Detailed reports and analytics to understand a candidate’s performance, strengths, and areas for improvement. 
• Supports multiple question types, such as multiple choice, coding, text input, and file upload.
• Anti-cheating and proctoring features to ensure the fairness and accuracy of the assessments

What You May Not Like:

• Limited customization for assessments.
• Limited integration with existing applicant tracking systems (ATS) and other HR software.

Price: Starts at $180/year. 

Evaluation Criteria 

The evaluation of products or tools chosen for this article follows an unbiased, systematic approach that ensures a fair, insightful, and well-rounded review. This method employs six key factors:

1. User Reviews / Ratings: Direct experiences from users, including ratings and feedback from reputable sites, provide a ground-level perspective. This feedback is critical in understanding overall satisfaction and potential problems.
2. Essential Features & Functionality: The value of a product is ascertained by its core features and overall functionality. Through an in-depth exploration of these aspects, the practical usefulness and effectiveness of the tools are carefully evaluated.
3. Ease of Use: The user-friendliness of a product or service is assessed, focusing on the design, interface, and navigation. This ensures a positive experience for users of all levels of expertise.
4. Customer Support: The quality of customer support is examined, taking into account its efficiency and how well it supports users in different phases – setting up, addressing concerns, and resolving operational issues.
5. Value for Money: Value for money is evaluated by comparing the quality, performance, and features. The goal is to help the reader understand whether they would be getting their money’s worth. 
6. Personal Experience / Experts’ Opinions: This part of the evaluation criteria draws insightful observations from the personal experience of the writer and the opinions of industry experts. 

Watch: How to Create an Online Quiz in Under 5 Mins

Ready to Pick the Best Pre-Employment Assessment Tool?

After a comprehensive review of the best pre-employment assessment tools, which one of these looks the best?

It’s still quite confusing, right? Let me help you out.

Here, I have shortlisted three excellent tools out of my list above, with a recap of each:

ProProfs Quiz Maker

ProProfs Quiz Maker is an easy-to-use and feature-packed pre-employment assessment tool with an AI quiz maker that lets you create custom quizzes on any topic in seconds. It also offers a vast library of ready-to-use skill assessments and questions, robust proctoring & security, and detailed reporting for seamless candidate evaluation.

Harver

Harver is a hiring assessment tool that is known for its innovative gamified assessments that create an engaging hiring experience. You can use it to assess candidates’ skills and cultural fit through customizable games, behavioral insights, and AI-driven scoring for a comprehensive evaluation while maintaining an enjoyable experience.

iMocha

iMocha focuses on evaluating candidates’ coding and technical skills. Featuring a coding simulator with real-time environments and automated assessments, it ensures accurate evaluation. You can use it to benchmark candidates against industry or internal standards, identifying top talents for technical roles.

So, which one of these tools is the best?

If I had to pick one, I’d choose ProProfs Quiz Maker for its ease of use, AI features, ready-to-use resources, and robust security and reporting.