Testing job candidates’ skills and qualities is an effective way to get the right hires for your business. It ensures that an applicant is proficient at the skills they list on their resume and evaluates whether they’ll be a good fit for your company.
Importantly, pre-employment screening helps remove human bias from your hiring process.
You need the right pre-employment testing software to make better hiring decisions. This guide compares the features of two testing platforms: TestGorilla and 123test.
TestGorilla is a pre-employment screening platform with 400+ scientifically validated tests to help you find your next great hire.
You can evaluate candidates’ personalities, test their programming skills, assess their cognitive abilities, and much more.
We develop all our tests in consultation with subject-matter experts and put them through a rigorous quality-control process.
TestGorilla makes it easy to mix and match tests to create custom assessments that fit your company’s needs. You can also add custom questions to any assessment.
TestGorilla offers plans for every size of business, from startups to large organizations. You can easily share applicants’ test results with your entire hiring team to make the process more inclusive and collaborative.
123test is an online platform that offers personality, IQ, and cognitive ability tests. Anyone can take 123test exams for free at any time. It also offers paid training courses for individuals who want to score higher on IQ and cognitive ability tests.
123test isn’t specifically designed for businesses and doesn’t integrate with applicant tracking systems. However, hiring managers can request that job applicants take a test on the site and share the results.
The more screening tests your company has access to, the more topics you can test candidates on. This is important for organizations that are hiring for multiple job roles with different requirements.
TestGorilla offers 400+ tests across categories such as:
Cognitive ability
Programming skills
Language skills
Job-specific skills
You can combine multiple tests from the library to create an assessment. TestGorilla will recommend tests based on the job you’re hiring for, or you can add any tests from the library.
In addition, TestGorilla enables you to add custom questions to your assessments. These include multiple-choice, text, audio, video, and file upload formats.
Plus, our platform supports international recruitment, with localized websites in 12 different languages – including English, French, Portuguese, and Japanese.
We’re also always adding new tests to our library. For example, check out our Neural Networks test for AI specialists.
See how TestGorilla leads the way in skills assessments. Sign up for our free live demo and discover a better way to evaluate candidates.
123test offers 36 tests. There are 21 IQ tests that assess logical reasoning, verbal reasoning, and related cognitive skills. The other tests evaluate different facets of an individual’s personality.
123test doesn’t have any hard skills tests, such as tests for software or programming skills, and you can’t combine multiple tests into an assessment or create your own questions.
In addition to its tests, 123test offers 10 training courses that are designed to prepare individuals for IQ tests. The training courses are similar in content to 123test’s IQ tests but offer a greater number of questions.
TestGorilla | 123test | |
Cognitive ability tests | Yes | Yes |
Situational judgment tests | Yes | Yes (the platform offers one situational judgment test) |
Job-specific tests | Yes | No |
Software tests | Yes | No |
Programming tests (including coding challenges) | Yes | No |
Language tests | Yes | No |
Personality tests | Yes | Yes |
Culture-add test | Yes | No |
Motivation test | Yes | Yes |
Your own custom tests | No | |
Custom questions per assessment | Yes | No |
Test recommendations for each job role | Yes | No |
Multiple tests per assessment | Yes | No |
Developers are critical to any organization that needs to build or maintain software.
Programming skills tests enable you to hire developers who can take your software stack to the next level.
TestGorilla offers 150 programming skills tests for coding languages like Node.js, C++, PHP, Python, and more. You can add custom coding problems to any test and create debugging challenges to evaluate candidates’ error-fixing skills.
TestGorilla automatically grades programming tests, making it easy to rank developers based on their skills.
We also have tests related to mobile apps, websites, and smart contracts development – and more than 50 software skills tests for platforms like Excel, Salesforce, and Microsoft Power BI.
Our unique language-agnostic coding test was recently added, which is one test with 20 languages. This way, developers can take the test in their preferred programming language.
Finally, you can use our coding report and timeline features to see how your candidates progressed through coding challenges.
123Test doesn’t offer any tests to evaluate programming or software skills.
TestGorilla | 123test | |
Coding languages | C, C#, C++, Go, Java, JavaScript, Kotlin, PHP, Python, R, Ruby, Scala, SQL, Swift, Typescript, Dart, Elixir, Erlang, Julia, Perl, and Rust | None |
Web-development frameworks | Yes | N/A |
Mobile-development frameworks | Yes | N/A |
Algorithmic-thinking challenges | Yes | N/A |
Debugging challenges | Yes | N/A |
Language-specific concept challenges | Yes | N/A |
Language-agnostic coding test | Yes | N/A |
Your own custom coding challenges | Yes | N/A |
Code-playback function | Yes | N/A |
Automated scoring | Yes | N/A |
Live peer coding | No | N/A |
Video interviews give hiring managers and recruiters a better look at a candidate’s personality and problem-solving process compared to text-based answers.
TestGorilla enables you to add one-way video questions to any assessment. To respond to this question format, candidates must record a video. You can set the maximum video length as well as see the number of recording attempts a candidate can make.
You can watch video responses on any device and at your preferred speed. TestGorilla also enables you to leave ratings and comments. This makes it easy to share your thoughts with the rest of your hiring team.
123test doesn’t offer any video questions or offer a way for candidates to record video responses.
TestGorilla | 123test | |
One-way video interview | Yes | No |
Custom video questions | Yes | N/A |
Record the number of candidates’ attempts | Yes | N/A |
Restrict maximum answer length | Yes | N/A |
Playback speed control | Yes | N/A |
Record and playback on any device | Yes | N/A |
Rate and comment on video answers | Yes | N/A |
Providing a good hiring experience is important to ensure that qualified candidates don’t drop out of your hiring process. It also makes your brand more memorable, which can encourage more highly skilled individuals to apply the next time you have an open role.
TestGorilla provides an effective pre-employment screening experience. You can invite candidates to take an assessment with a public or private link, and applicants can launch the assessment on any device at any time without creating an account.
Each TestGorilla test takes 10-15 minutes, and an assessment typically takes 30-60 minutes in total. If candidates have questions at any point during the process, they can contact TestGorilla’s customer support team via live chat or email.
You can personalize assessments with your company’s logo and brand colors. Candidates who take assessments in English are redirected to create a TestGorilla profile so they can view their results.
TestGorilla even has tools to help you keep applicants updated about their progress. You can create custom rejection emails to send to those who won’t proceed further in the hiring process, as well as personalized invitations to candidates who will move to the next stage.
123test is not specifically designed for organizations and doesn’t integrate with your hiring process. You must manually email candidates with a link to the test you would like them to take and then ask them to share their results with you.
Each test takes around 10-20 minutes to complete. Applicants can take tests on any device, and they can see their results without creating a 123test account. However, they must create an account in order to save and share their results.
There’s also no option to brand tests. Applicants have access to 123test’s support team for questions, but assistance is available by email only.
TestGorilla | 123test | |
Your company’s intro and/or outro video | Yes | No |
Assessments branded with your company logo and colors | Yes | No |
Customizable invitation and rejection emails | Yes | No |
No login required for candidates | Yes | Required to save and share results |
Mobile friendly | Yes | Yes |
Help and support for your candidates | Yes | Yes |
Typical assessment length | 30-60 minutes | 10-20 minutes |
Qualifying questions prior to assessment | Yes | No |
Organizations from startups to large enterprises can benefit from pre-employment screening. You need a platform that can grow with your company as your hiring needs change over time.
TestGorilla offers multiple pricing options to cater to businesses of every size.
Our Free plan provides a way for small businesses and new ventures to get started with pre-employment screening software at no cost. Tiered plans offer more features, including custom questions, for larger businesses.
TestGorilla also has a custom plan for enterprise-scale companies.
TestGorilla integrates with ATS platforms like Greenhouse, SmartRecruiters, and JazzHR, making it easy to keep track of candidates’ assessment results alongside their resumes and other application data. Our platform is GDPR compliant, and enterprises can use TestGorilla’s API to import assessment data to a custom hiring platform.
TestGorilla has localized websites in 12 languages, enabling your team to recruit talent from around the world or hire local employees for your international offices.
TestGorilla also helps you hire for multiple positions at the same time. You can send bulk invitations for candidates to take assessments and use various other bulk actions. And our filters make it much easier to compare candidates based on different factors like test scores, responses to custom questions, and answers to multiple-choice questions.
You can also create a unique public assessment link for each site where you post jobs. This enables you to track how applicants are finding out about your open roles.
You can even use TestGorilla’s job board, which is available for all customers and lets you post remote job positions at no extra cost.
Most of the tests on 123test are available for free, but training courses and some extended reports cost money.
Businesses can pre-purchase credits, called “tickets,” for these paid products and email the credit code to candidates. However, it’s not possible to send out credit codes in bulk, and you must send each one manually.
123test doesn’t integrate with ATS platforms, and the reports are in PDF format. So, it’s not straightforward to import applicants’ test result data into an ATS platform or to directly compare candidates against one another. The platform also doesn’t offer an API.
123test has localized websites in five languages.
TestGorilla | 123test | |
ATS integration | Yes | No |
Multiple users and role-based rights management | Yes | No |
GDPR compliant | Yes | Yes |
Multiple candidate invitation options | Yes | No |
Public links to invite candidates | Yes | Yes |
Public links for each candidate source | Yes | No |
Bulk invite candidates (CSV/XLSX upload) | Yes | No |
Track candidate stages from invited to hired | Yes | No |
API access | Yes | No |
Bulk actions to manage candidates | Yes | No |
For pre-employment screening to be useful in hiring, it’s crucial to trust the tests you’re using to screen candidates. For this reason, it’s important to understand the quality-control measures that go into each test.
All of TestGorilla’s tests are science-backed and reviewed by subject-matter experts, peer reviewers, and sample testers. Each test is subject to a 28-step quality control process before going live.
The question bank for each test includes at least 100 questions. Tests use 12-20 questions each time you administer them.
TestGorilla recycles questions out of the bank after they have been used several times. This prevents them from being overexposed, which could give future applicants an unfair advantage.
123test uses psychometric research and proven theories to develop its tests. It creates each test in conjunction with professional test developers.
However, 123test doesn’t perform continuous updates to its existing tests. The software doesn’t replace questions after they have been used repeatedly. There’s also no mechanism for businesses or test-takers to provide feedback about the tests.
TestGorilla | 123test | |
Proprietary algorithms that continuously improve the quality of each test | Yes | No |
Extensive quality checks before tests go live | Yes | Yes |
Questions automatically replaced after reaching exposure limit | Yes | No |
Customer feedback used to improve tests | Yes | No |
Test-taker feedback used to improve tests | Yes | No |
Anti-cheating measures ensure that candidates’ responses reflect their true skills and abilities. They also prevent individuals from getting an unfair leg up in your testing process.
TestGorilla offers a number of features to prevent cheating.
First, TestGorilla replaces questions before they’re overused, and you can disable copy and paste to prevent applicants from leaking questions. In addition, TestGorilla cycles questions from the question bank for each assessment.
TestGorilla alerts hiring managers if a candidate opens another window while taking an assessment. This can indicate that they’re researching answers. You can also set time limits on assessments to prevent applicants from spending time looking up answers.
With a candidate’s permission, you can also record their screen or monitor the test environment using their webcam.
123test doesn’t offer any anti-cheating measures. Tests don’t have time limits, and there are no features to prevent candidates from researching answers.
TestGorilla | 123test | |
IP-address logging (to avoid multiple attempts by the same candidate) | Yes | No |
Logging of a candidate’s location | Yes | No |
Webcam snapshots (with the option to turn on/off) | Yes | No |
Full-screen mode detection (to avoid research during the test) | Yes | No |
Randomized questions per test | Yes | No |
Large question pool for each test | Yes (100+) | No |
Questions and answers not visible to employers to protect test integrity | Yes | No |
Time limit on tests | Yes (typically 10 minutes) | No |
Copy-paste disabled | Yes | No |
Reporting tools are essential for making the most of your pre-employment screening results. They can help you compare candidates and decide who to invite for an in-person interview.
TestGorilla offers a detailed report for each applicant that shows their overall assessment result as well as the results for each test component.
You can review candidate responses and add notes or ratings. You can also share reports with your hiring team in PDF, XLSX, and CSV formats.
Our Candidate PDF Reports let users get insights into candidates' strengths and weaknesses in specific skills-based areas and share the results with team members.
Our new weighted scores feature lets you personalize the impact each of the tests has on a candidate’s final score. This allows users to:
Give more importance to specific skills or qualities crucial for a role
Tailor assessments to your unique hiring needs by adjusting weightage based on your criteria
Get a clearer and more accurate representation of a candidate's suitability for the role
You can compare candidates directly and rank them according to their scores. This makes it easy to find top-scoring applicants and decide who should move to the next stage of the hiring process.
123test offers a basic report for each test that displays a candidate’s responses and overall score. Several personality tests offer extended reports with more detail about average responses, but they’re not free.
123test doesn’t send reports directly to employers. Instead, applicants must create a 123test account, download a PDF version of their report, and send it to hiring managers. There are no tools for directly comparing candidates’ performance on tests.
TestGorilla | 123test | |
PDF reports of assessments and individual candidates | Yes | Yes |
Excel and CSV reports of assessments and individual candidates | Yes | No |
Comprehensive overview for all current and past candidates | Yes | No |
Scoring benchmarks for candidates (including percentile rank scoring) | Yes | No |
Add your ratings and personal notes for candidates | Yes | No |
Your pre-employment screening platform should have a responsive customer support team to answer any questions. Look for a thorough self-service help center and multiple ways to get in touch.
TestGorilla offers customer and candidate support by email and live chat. All new users receive an onboarding tour to help them get started.
We also post blog articles on skills-based hiring, interviewing techniques, and pre-employment testing.
There’s also an online help center with detailed tutorials that show how to create assessments and build reports.
123test offers support by email only. There’s a brief FAQs page on the 123test website – but no onboarding tour for new users.
TestGorilla | 123test | |
Live chat | Yes | No |
Help center | Yes | No |
Email support | Yes | Yes |
Training and onboarding tour | Yes | No |
Phone assistance | No | No |
Your pre-employment testing software should offer affordable plans to meet your organization’s hiring needs.
TestGorilla has three pricing plans:
Free (forever) at $0. This grants full access to five free tests for companies of all sizes.
Depending on the size of your company, paid plans begin with:
Starter plan from $75 per month. This grants access to the complete test library and unlimited concurrent assessments.
Pro plan from $115 per month. This plan includes all features of the Starter plan plus video questions, ATS integrations, API access, and options for customized branding.
TestGorilla’s pricing plans scale with your company’s size, which is calculated according to the number of full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) at your company. For example, if you have four part-time workers and they all work 10 hours a week, together they equal an FTE.
Businesses with 1-15 FTEs must subscribe to an annual plan. Monthly pricing is available for larger teams, with fees based on their size. With our scaled pricing, a company with 16-30 FTEs will pay $120 per month for the Starter plan, while a company with 31-50 FTEs will pay $208 per month, and so on.
TestGorilla’s paid plans can support 1,000+ FTEs, and you can test as many candidates as you like. You can also have unlimited account users.
All tests on 123test are free and include free reports.
Extended reports for personality tests cost $8.99-$17.99 each.
Assessment training courses cost $19.99 each for three months of access. You can also purchase all 10 available training courses for $47.99.
TestGorilla | 123test | ||
Plan | Price | Plan | Price |
Free (forever) | $0 | Free tests | $0 |
Starter | From $75 USD per month ($900 per year paid upfront for companies with 1-15 FTEs) | Extended reports | $8.99-$17.99 each |
Pro | From $115 USD per month ($1,380 per year paid upfront for companies with 1-15 FTEs) | Training courses | $19.99 each or $47.99 for all |
It’s crucial that your pre-employment screening platform is easy to use. The more user-friendly it is, the more likely your hiring team is to use it.
TestGorilla offers a seamless user interface and an excellent user experience.
TestGorilla automatically suggests tests to include in your assessment based on the job role you’re hiring for. You can add custom questions to any assessment in minutes, and you can also review candidates’ responses on any device.
There’s also a test preview option, so you can check out at each test before you decide to include it in your assessment. Our test library also lets you enter a particular skill or role into the search bar to find recommended tests.
You can send invitations in bulk to all applicants and create unique links for each job site your company uses, enabling you to track how candidates found your job post.
TestGorilla integrates with more than 15 ATS platforms to help you manage applicant data. User permissions and shareable notes make it easy to collaborate with other members of your hiring team.
Find out what sets TestGorilla apart in hiring. Sign up for our free plan and access comprehensive tools for effective candidate screening.
123test enables businesses to send applicants a link to a free test or prepaid credits for a training course or extended report. However, it’s not possible to send bulk invitations or to create unique links for each job site your company uses.
Candidates must manually share their results with hiring managers. This requires them to create an account, download their report, and then email the report.
123test doesn’t provide CSV reports, which makes it difficult to import data into an ATS platform.
TestGorilla and 123test both offer pre-employment screening tests, but they have very different capabilities.
TestGorilla offers 400+ for personality, cognitive ability, programming skills, job-specific skills, and more. You can combine multiple tests into an assessment and add custom questions.
TestGorilla makes it easy to rank candidates based on their assessment scores and integrates with ATS platforms to streamline your hiring process.
123test acknowledges that it’s not a platform for recruiting. It has only 28 tests for personality and cognitive ability. The platform doesn’t support custom questions and doesn’t integrate with ATS platforms. 123test also doesn’t offer anti-cheating measures or update its questions over time.
TestGorilla is clearly the best choice for pre-employment screening. You can quickly evaluate candidates based on the skills that matter most for your open position. It’s also easy to keep track of your pre-employment screening data and collaborate with your hiring team throughout the screening process.
Pre-employment testing helps you find the best candidate quickly. You can see what skills and qualities an applicant will bring to your company before you invite them to an in-person interview.
TestGorilla is a leading pre-employment screening service catering to businesses of all sizes. Check out our plans, book a demo, or sign up for a free account to find the best person for your next hire.
Why not try TestGorilla for free, and see what happens when you put skills first.
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