Assessments for small hiring teams compared
What to run once you have a shortlist. Skills tests, work samples, coding tests and behavioural questionnaires compared on price and on fit.
For a team hiring a handful of people a year, one assessment is usually enough and the choice is which kind. A skills test from a library is the cheapest and the only category here with a published price and a usable free plan. A work sample tells you the most and costs you candidates if it arrives too early. A coding test belongs in developer hiring and nowhere else. A behavioural questionnaire is for how someone will work with your team, not for whether they can do the job, and reading it the other way round is the common mistake.
| Criterion | Skills tests | Work samples | Coding tests | Behavioural questionnaires |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| What it measures | Cognitive ability, language, software knowledge and personality, drawn from a library of a few hundred tests. TestGorilla is the best known | How someone actually does a piece of the job, scored from what they produce. Vervoe is the usual name | Technical depth for developers, with plagiarism checks and proctoring. HackerRank and Codility | Working style and motivation, used for team fit rather than capability. Predictive Index and its peers |
| A price you can read without a call | Yes. A free plan, two published paid tiers and a custom one above them | No. The vendor asks you to request pricing | No figure on the product pages, though a free trial and a free sign up are offered | No. Quoted per company |
| A free tier you could actually use | Yes. A handful of essential tests and a small monthly credit allowance, with no card needed | No | A free trial rather than a free tier | No |
| What it costs the candidate | One credit a candidate for a skills test, two for a machine led interview, so cost tracks volume | A task to complete, longer than a test, which loses you people if it arrives too early | A timed exercise, usually an hour or more | A short questionnaire, a few minutes |
| Where it fits in the process | A first filter across a mixed shortlist, before anyone spends interview time | The final two or three, where the decision is genuinely close | Any developer role where code quality is the open question | After the capability decision, to see how someone will work with the team |
| When to skip it | The shortlist is four people you already know are qualified | The role is common, the market is fast, and speed beats precision | Your own engineers will interview properly anyway | You are hiring one person and the manager will spend real time with them first |
When a skills test is the right choice
A library test is the right first move when your shortlist is longer than your interview capacity and mixed in quality. It is the only category here where you can start for nothing, see what the reports look like, and work out whether your hiring managers will actually read them, which is the real question. Watch the credit model rather than the headline tier, because cost scales with candidates and the headline is priced for a volume you may not have.
When a work sample is the right choice
A work sample is the best signal available and the most expensive thing you can ask of someone who is currently employed and not desperate. It belongs at the end, with the final two or three, framed as a paid or short piece of real work, and it should replace an interview rather than sit on top of one. Asked too early, of a passive candidate, it reads as a company that does not value the time of the people it approached, and the good ones simply stop replying.
When to skip the whole category
If a role has been open for months and the shortlist is four people, an assessment stage measures four people and delays all of them. Testing is a tool for choosing between candidates you already have. It does nothing about not having them, and the temptation to add a stage when the pipeline is thin is a way of looking busy while the vacancy stays open.
Where a monthly search sits beside it
Assessments sort a shortlist. Producing one is the other job. For a hard to fill role we find the most relevant people in your market whether they are looking or not, tell each of them about that role, and bring the best few to a call with your team within two weeks, at about a tenth of a recruiting agency. Run whichever assessment you like on the people we bring. If the role is something like a DevOps or platform engineer, see how a monthly search compares to an agency or read how it works.
If we would be a fit, we will bring a shortlist of the best few candidates for your role to the call.
Book a 20 minute call