There is no shortage of hiring assessment tools in the market to support with those crucial hiring decisions, so how do you know which tool is going to be most suited to your company needs? Do you rely on the tried and tested, tools like Saville, SHL or Hogan who have been around for many years and have a very well-established position in the market. Or with the development of more sophisticated technology and more scrutiny and debate around the most effective assessment techniques, is it best to explore newer providers in the market?
These are some of the things MyHiringBuddy can offer support with, offering impartial views on the merits of many of the hiring tools on the market, but in conjunction with The Highfield Partnership we thought it would be useful to survey the communities who regularly use these types of tools for hiring purposes (recruiters, HR professional, occupational psychologists) to ask about the tools they use and favour.
As well as simply polling to get a sense for which tools were the most widely used, we also wanted to find out which tools they thought:
- Were overall their go-to tools
- Provided the most compelling insight
- Offered the best candidate, or employer experience
- Were best for aptitude testing
- Were most suitable for leadership level, or early career hiring
- Produced insight in the most user-friendly way
- Minimized adverse impact around diversity & inclusion
- Offered something innovative in the market
You can download the raw data from our survey if you’d like to see the responses in full, but with some analysis of the figures we had some interesting and in some cases surprising results, with some newer names emerging to the fore, particularly if you were thinking the usual suspects (SHL, Hogan, Saville) would top the charts! Here are just some of the headlines we’d like to share from the groups we surveyed.
The most commonly used hiring assessment tools:
- SHL
- Zircon BeTalent
- Saville
- Hogan
- Thomas International
Top of the pops for the most valued tool (total numbers):
- Zircon BeTalent
- SHL
- Saville
- Hogan
- Talent Q (KornFerry)
Top of the pops for the most valued tool (as a proportion of users):
- Zircon BeTalent & Cognissess
- Sova
- Aon Assessment
- Saville
Most preferred for aptitude testing (as a proportion of users):
- Sova & Cognissess
- Zircon BeTalent
- Saville
- SHL, Cubiks & AssessFirst
Most user friendly (as a proportion of users):
- Cognisses, AssessFirst, Zircon BeTalent
- Sova
- GC Index
- 10x
Gives the best candidate experience (as a proportion of users):
- Aon Assessment & Cognissess
- Zircon BeTalent
- Sova
- Caliper, GC Index, Lumina Spark & 10x
Most effectively minimises adverse impact for Equality, Diversity & Inclusion (as a proportion of users):
- Cognissess
- Zircon BeTalent
- Lumina Spark
- Aon Assessment
- Sova
Offers the most innovative solutions (total numbers):
- Zircon BeTalent
- Artic Shores & SHL
- Sova
- Aon Assessment, GC Index, Spotted Zebra, 10x & TalentQ
Gives the best customer experience (as a proportion of users):
- Aon Assessment & Zircon BeTalent
- Sova
- Saville
- Pymetrics & GC Index
We hope this may provoke some thought, and actively encourage you to explore the wide array of tools out there. At MyHiringBuddy we collaborate with independent market experts in the hiring assessment world to actively review the assessment tools in the market so we can provide subscribers our ‘expert’s review’ to support decision making on which tools will be best for their purpose.
If you haven’t had the chance to add your thoughts, and would like to, we are keeping the survey open and will update notable changes in the results, so please do participate and encourage others to do so using this link https://forms.gle/vaaojjhGbU3aXXHR9. All responses will be anonymous so we won’t be collecting personal data on participants!
About the research:
We’d stress the questionnaire we launched was promoted very openly and with complete impartiality, but as a disclaimer, it’s certainly worth pointing out that this was a relatively small sample population (63 respondents). So some results may be the result of only having 1 user experience to refer to (such as Cognissess), or have been influenced by very high supporters of one type of tool taking part. We would also point out that we did not know every tool out there when we began the research, so some may not have appeared on the initial survey, and as such we also asked for recommendations of other tools that people have experience with. These named tools are referenced in the downloadable report and will be added to the survey for future use.