Best Talent Assessment Tools for Applicants - Executive Recruiters
      Best Talent Assessment Tools for Applicants - Best HR Executive Recruiters

      The Best Talent Assessment Tools for New Applicants

      Hiring a new employee is a significant expense. You want to make sure that your new worker has the hard and soft skills to meet your needs. If you make a mistake, your organization can lose money. The productivity of your other employees can decline, and you may face challenges in the working environment.

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      A bad hire can cost employers thousands of dollars. Managers must find someone else to fill the role if the employee leaves. Turnover can make other employees concerned about their own positions and lead to lost time and more costs.

      Organizations should seek to minimize the potential for bad hires. One way to improve the hiring process is to use talent assessment tests to weed out individuals who don’t have the appropriate skills for the role. The tests can also highlight each applicant’s soft skills, like communication and working well with others.

      Top Talent Assessment Tools for Organizations

      Our top HR executive recruiters have identified six talent assessment tools that can improve the hiring process by minimizing the chances of a bad hire. These six talent assessment tools include:

      1. Mercer Mettl
      2. Criteria
      3. Interview Mocha
      4. ThriveMap
      5. HireVue
      6. Cappfinity

      Here is a closer look at each of these talent assessment tools for HR professionals and executive recruiters, along with insights revealing the unique information that each tool can uncover.

      Talent Assessment Tool #1: Mercer Mettl

      Perhaps the most widely known hiring assessment tests are available from Mercer. Mercer is a worldwide company specializing in employee benefits, investments, M&A advisory, and human resources. 

      With Mettl, the company offers a wide variety of testing tools that employers can use to assess their applicants’ personal qualities and skills. Customers who use Mettl include leading organizations like Microsoft, Amazon, and J.P. Morgan.

      Mettl separates its tests into these categories:

      • Psychometric
      • Behavioral
      • Aptitude
      • Technical
      • Communication skills
      • Coding

      Each testing category allows for further diversification so organizations can customize tests to fit their needs. 

      Managers can use the tests to evaluate applicants’ leadership abilities, reasoning skills, situational judgment, and functional abilities. Companies seeking to hire IT professionals can test their coding capabilities with specific coding languages like Ruby on Rails, CSS, Javascript, and C++.

      Organizations can try out Mettl for free before purchasing a subscription that fits their needs.

      Talent Assessment Tool #2: Criteria

      Criteria offers a suite of tests that evaluate all aspects of a candidate’s skills, cognitive ability, personality, and emotional intelligence. Employers can choose from a variety of tests in each category. 

      Organizations seeking to evaluate an employee’s cognitive abilities will find standard tests like:

      • CCAT
      • CMRA
      • UCAT
      • Specialized, game-based tests to assess decision-making and problem-solving skills

      Personality tests include examinations measuring a person’s work style and behavioral preferences. Employers seeking to fill customer service or sales positions can choose specific tests that measure cooperation, patience, and extroversion.

      Criteria also offers basic skills tests to assess computer literacy and proficiency with programs like Excel and PowerPoint.

      Criteria counts several major organizations among its customers, including eBay, SoFi, and Deloitte. Companies can sign up for a free 21-day trial to determine whether the testing solutions are right for them.

      Talent Assessment Tool #3: Interview Mocha

      Interview Mocha is a talent assessment solution offering an extensive library of skills tests for all sorts of positions, including engineering, digital marketing, finance, and IT. Organizations can choose from hundreds of job-specific aptitude tests, like mechanical engineering and automation testing. 

      Interview Mocha also offers:

      • Broad-based examinations that cover analytical thinking and language comprehension skills.  
      • Video proctoring and live coding interviews to ensure that approved applicants take the tests. 

      Numerous organizations use Interview Mocha in their employee testing processes, including Vanguard, Ernst & Young, and PayPal. The company has thousands of Fortune 500 and global organizations among its customers.

      Talent Assessment Tool #4: ThriveMap

      ThriveMap offers a tailored solution designed to assist you with end-to-end hiring processes. The company works with organizations to:

      • Define hiring goals
      • Identify strategic ways to attract top talent
      • Build tailored assessments

      ThriveMap can structure its assessments for multiple roles or single positions. 

      Once an organization implements the testing and hiring solutions that ThriveMap develops, the company continually reviews results to ensure that its solutions are working. If changes are necessary, ThriveMap will make the appropriate modifications.

      ThriveMap is an excellent choice for large organizations that regularly hire new employees. The company has several well-known customers, including Cote Brasserie, Safelite Autoglass, and Belron. 

      Talent Assessment Tool #5: HireVue

      HireVue offers custom interview, game-based, and coding assessments. Each interview assessment meets corporate requirements and evaluates applicants’ skills and cognitive abilities.

      HireVue’s game-based assessments offer a fun and proactive way for employers to determine applicants’ leadership potential and collaboration abilities. 

      Organizations seeking experienced IT employees can quickly evaluate a candidate’s coding ability with relevant tests. Companies can choose between live testing and an online assessment in languages like Javascript, C#, and Perl. 

      HireVue is a global option for employers seeking workers in multiple countries. Testing is available in over 30 languages.

      Some top clients using HireVue include Vodafone, Tiffany & Co., and Qantas.

      Talent Assessment Tool #6: Cappfinity

      Cappfinity offers several assessment tests for organizations seeking to hire employees at all levels, including entry-level, mid-level, and senior management. Tests evaluate an applicant’s ability to manage others, collaborate with colleagues, and make solid decisions. 

      Cappfinity also offers a robust technical assessment to evaluate candidates’ strengths and weaknesses. Employers gain more insight into how applicants think and make decisions. 

      Managers can tailor their testing to look for applicants with specific abilities related to the role. 

      Multiple major companies use Cappfinity for applicant assessments. Some of its largest customers include Grant Thornton, DHL, KPMG, and HSBC.

      Why Employment Testing Matters

      Organizations realize they need to hire individuals with the skills to handle their roles and fit well in the organization. Standard hiring practices can be helpful but also introduce the potential for bias. Managers can easily pick the wrong person if they don’t fully evaluate all of a candidate’s qualifications for the job. 

      Employment testing is so essential because it allows:

      • Organizations to seek applicants with specific abilities and strengths
      • Employers to request that applicants undergo several tests, including ones related to the job itself and psychometric tests that evaluate a person’s behavioral traits.
      • Hiring professionals to reduce the chances of hiring the wrong person
      • Recruiters, HR pros, and others to screen and hire for diversity in the work environment. 

      Top HR Executive Search Firm – Cowen Partners

      Human Resources Executive Search

      At Cowen Partners, our HR executive recruiters are exceptionally skilled at delivering in-demand candidates, no matter the need and across all industries. Backed by a proven executive recruiting process, we have been the partner of choice for startups, corporations, small businesses, non-profits, and more, meeting unique and critical recruitment needs across the entire C-suite, including CEOs, CFOs, COOs, CMOs, CIOs, CTOs, CHROs, VPs, directors, and several other leadership roles. 

      With our executive recruiters, you get senior partner-led searches, due diligence-run networking, meticulous candidate vetting, and so much more, all geared towards one goal — placing the very best talent as soon as possible, all while ensuring a seamless fit with your company culture, your big-picture objectives, and other factors. Plus, we have one of the highest candidate retention rates in the industry while consistently delivering world-class talent faster than the competition. 

      That’s how Cowen Partners has become a leading executive search firm nationwide, and it’s why our executive recruiters have a reputation for excellence and success.

      Contact us to see why we are continually ranked as one of the best executive search firms around and why we have so many repeat and long-term clients, as well as referrals.

      We also invite you to continue exploring more executive recruiting insights from our team:

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