5 talent management assessment tools for creating custom questions

Talent assessment tools enable you to test candidates and see if their skills and personality are right for your open position. But every company has unique requirements for a job role, with some focusing purely on hard skills and others focusing on skills, traits, and culture fit. 

This is why the option to add custom questions is a must-have feature in any pre-employment screening platform.

In this article, we’ll compare the five best talent management assessment platforms and their features to help you pick the best one for your organization.

Top 5 talent assessment software for creating custom questions at a glance

Top 5 talent assessment software for creating custom questions: Comparisons

Let’s delve into the features, pros, and cons of each of the top pre-employment screening tools mentioned above.

1. TestGorilla

TestGorilla has an expansive test library with 300+ tests. Hiring managers can add custom questions to each test to tailor the assessments to match specific job roles. They can also build tests from scratch or mix and match existing tests to create custom assessments. 

Whether you’re hiring a marketing manager or a software developer, you can tailor tests that assess their hard skills, personality traits, and how they’ll fit into your organization. 

TestGorilla recommends assessments for each role. These can be personalized using your own questions. You can also use multiple question types, including custom coding tasks, videos, file uploads, multiple-choice, and essays.

TestGorilla identifies the most qualified candidates for a role by automatically grading assessments. HR teams can use the TestGorilla API to integrate the tool with other software and create a cohesive hiring environment.

Best for: Startups and enterprises that want to create tailored pre-employment screening tests

Features:

• 300+ tests for technical, soft, and job-specific skills 

• Build custom assessments

• Coding challenges to assess developers

• Build tests in 11 languages

• Add company branding and custom URLs to tests

• Unified dashboard for candidate management

• Bulk actions for large-scale hiring pipelines

Pros:

• Create your custom tests from scratch

• Proprietary algorithm improves tests regularly

• Allows candidates to complete assessments from any device without logging in

• Each test passes through a rigorous 28-step quality control process before going live

• Includes advanced anti-cheating measures, like IP address logging, full-screen mode detection, and time limits

Cons:

• No two-way video interviews

Pricing:

• Free forever at $0 - 10 free tests, including all personality tests.

• Depending on the size of your company, paid plans begin with:

• Starter from $75 USD per month ($900 per year paid upfront) - start with skills-based hiring for all roles. There is also the option to pay monthly, starting from 85 USD per month.

• Pro from $115 USD per month ($1,380 per year paid upfront) - maximize your hiring with advanced features. There is also the option to pay monthly, starting from $130 USD per month.

Verdict:

TestGorilla’s custom tests are ideal for organizations of all sizes. Its assessments can be easily customized to accurately assess candidates for every role.

The tool also encourages collaborative hiring with a candidate dashboard, integrations with ATS systems, and an API for working with third-party tools. 

Additionally, global businesses can find the best candidates using tests in 11 different languages.

2. Vervoe

Vervoe offers more than 300 assessments for pre-employment screening. It also features the ‌Assessment Builder, where users enter a job title, and the software recommends the right skills and questions to use.

Best for: Businesses hiring more than 50 candidates per year

Features:

• 300+ assessments 

• Assessment Builder to create assessments

• AI grading

Pros:

• Vervoe consultants help users build custom assessments

• Supports multiple question types 

• Detailed candidate reports 

• Offers an onboarding training program

Cons:

• Has a dashboard to track candidates, but reports can be exported only in CSV format

• No assessments to test language skills or culture add

Pricing:

• Pay and go: $228 per year. One assessment, up to 100 candidates per year.

• Skills-based hiring: Custom pricing. Tailored to suit client requirements.

Verdict:

Vervoe is a great pre-employment tool with personalized assessments. It’s ideal for companies that want to use AI to build and grade assessments. 

However, training the AI to accurately meet company requirements can be time-consuming. The platform’s pricing options are also less transparent than other tools.

3. Toggl Hire

Toggl Hire has 180+ skills tests that recruiters can add their own questions‌ to. The platform has an extensive question bank and is easy to set up.

Best for: SMBs

Features:

• 180+ tests for hard skills and personality traits

• Custom passing grade to filter candidates

• Email templates to send invites and rejections

• One-way video interviews with up to 3 questions

Pros:

• Bank of 15,000+ questions to tailor assessments

• Add custom questions to each test

• Homework assignments to predict real-world job performance

• Integrate directly with Greenhouse and Workable ATS solutions

Cons:

• No tests for cognitive ability, situational judgment, or culture add

• Can export candidate reports only in PDF and CSV formats

• Doesn’t support custom coding challenges or code playback

Pricing:

• Free: $0. Test 5 candidates per year with unlimited tests and users.

• Basic: $17 per month. Unlimited tests, assess up to 20 candidates per year.

• Premium: $299 per month. Build custom tests, assess up to 2000 candidates per year.

• Business: $469 per month. Unlock bulk actions and test unlimited candidates per year.

Verdict:

Toggl Hire ensures that every candidate gets a unique test and allows recruiters to add custom questions for more reliable testing. 

On the other hand, its test library is less comprehensive than other tools, and there could be more features for hiring developers.

4. Codility

Codility is a talent assessment software specifically for technical roles. It has tests and tasks for testing skills related to engineering and can also be used to assess data scientists, developers, and more. 

Best for: Pre-employment coding assessments

Features:

• Create customizable tests for 90+ coding languages and technologies using CodeCheck

• Conduct live technical interviews using CodeLive

• Host large-scale events, like hackathons, for mass recruiting using CodeEvent

Pros:

• Build custom tests and tasks for hiring technical personnel

• Live interactive interviews to understand candidates’ personalities and problem-solving skills

• Anti-plagiarism toolkit including web crawling, similarity checkers, and IP tracking to prevent cheating during assessments

• Streamline candidate assessment with pre-built integrations, including ATS systems like Greenhouse and Lever

Cons:

• Only suitable for recruiting candidates for technical positions

• No way assess personality traits, language skills, or culture fit

Pricing:

Contact Codility for a quote

Verdict:

Codility is an excellent tool for live-testing engineers and developers. The platform has an expansive collection of skills tests and tasks, enterprise-level compliance, and features to streamline collaborative hiring.

That said, it’s not an all-in-one pre-employment screening tool. Hiring teams will need other tools to assess candidates’ personalities, soft skills, and how they’ll fit into their organization.

5. HighMatch

HighMatch is a pre-employment assessment platform that helps recruiters test candidates’ personality, aptitudes, situational judgment, and hard skills.

Best for: Creating mobile-first pre-employment tests 

Features:

• Personalized tests created by workplace psychologists 

• Customizable invitation and rejection emails

• Tests can be branded with company logo and colors

Pros:

• Add custom intro and outro videos

• Screening survey to filter out non-viable candidates

• Send test invitations via SMS

Cons:

• No option to add custom video questions or conduct video interviews

• Each assessment is a standalone test, so recruiters must use multiple assessments to get a detailed overview of candidates

• No tests to measure coding abilities, language proficiency, or culture add

• No candidate support available during assessments

Pricing:

Contact HighMatch for a quote

Verdict:

HighMatch is a good option for mobile-first pre-employment screening. It creates a smoother experience for modern candidates. 

Unfortunately, it has a smaller test library compared to other platforms and doesn’t offer test-takers any support during assessments.

Conclusion: Our top 3 choices

TestGorilla, Vervoe, and Toggl Hire are the three best talent management assessment tools that enable users to create custom questions for each test. 

TestGorilla offers a comprehensive list of customizable pre-employment tests to assess candidates’ skills, personalities, and how they’ll fit into the team. You can also use our tests in combination with our talent assessment templates to evaluate your workforce.

Vervoe uses AI to speed up parts of the testing process, and Toggl Hire is easy to set up and start testing.

Disclaimer: The information on TestGorilla competitors has been taken from the relevant competitor website and is accurate at the date of publication.