Hiring can be stressful for recruiters and candidates alike, but it doesn’t have to be. Pre-employment assessments provide a fair, skills-based approach to selecting the best candidates for your job openings.
This article compares TestGorilla and Paradox, covering the features they have in common and those that set them apart. Read on to find out which one is best for your hiring needs.
TestGorilla offers more than 400+ tests that you can pick and mix to create your own assessments and find your top candidates.
You can assess a wide range of skills and characteristics, such as role-specific skills, personality type, cultural fit, cognitive ability, language proficiency, and more. Our tests are ready to be used out of the box and benefit from a rigorous quality-control process.
You can also use custom questions and tests to personalize your assessments further. Choose from a selection of answer types, including multiple-choice, file upload, and video.
One of TestGorilla’s biggest advantages is how quick and easy it is to use. Inviting applicants in bulk speeds up the process, and candidates can start tests right away without any login. You can book a 45-minute demo to see TestGorilla in action.
All our tests adhere to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) standards, helping to remove bias from your hiring process.
Paradox offers two types of pre-employment tests. Its personality test is based on the Big Five model and provides information on the individual’s potential behavior at work. Meanwhile, its General Mental Ability (GMA) test enables you to assess cognitive ability.
Tests take two to five minutes to complete, with many questions prompting “me” or “not me” answers. They’re also highly visual, featuring images of relatable animated characters.
A conversational chatbot named Olivia invites candidates to take assessments and can answer general questions. It can also request video answers and schedule live interview meetings.
Large test libraries let you assess a vast range of skills and traits. Popular test types include personality, cognitive ability, and job-specific tests.
You get extra flexibility when you’re able to customize questions and include multiple tests in assessments.
Our library includes more than 400+ tests across multiple categories, including cognitive ability, personality and culture, role-specific skills, situational judgment, software development, and programming.
We’re also continually updating our test library. For example, the library now includes the AI Product Manager and Generative AI tests, and our new language-agnostic coding test covers 20 programming languages.
To make things easier, we’ll recommend which tests are best suited for a particular job title, and you can pick from answer types like multiple-choice, essay, file upload, and video. The test library search update helps users find recommended tests by entering a skill or role, plus there’s a test preview option.
See how TestGorilla leads the way in skills assessments. Sign up for our free live demo and discover a better way to evaluate candidates.
Paradox’s assessment platform, Traitify, reveals your candidates’ personality traits and cognitive abilities. Tests take from two to five minutes to complete.
Personality test reports describe candidates’ personality types based on the Big Five areas – openness, conscientiousness, extraversion, agreeableness, and neuroticism. You also get interview question recommendations based on personality type.
Paradox’s GMA test measures candidates’ ability to process information and problem-solve.
Its downside, however, is not offering customizable questions and tests.
TestGorilla | Paradox | |
Cognitive ability tests | Yes | Yes |
Situational judgment tests | Yes | No |
Job-specific tests | Yes | No |
Software tests | Yes | No |
Programming tests (including coding challenges) | Yes | No |
Language tests | Yes | No |
Personality test | Yes | Yes |
Culture-add test | Yes | No |
Motivation test | Yes | No |
Typing test | Yes | No |
Your own custom tests | Yes | No |
Custom questions per assessment | Yes | No |
Test recommendations for each job role | Yes | No |
Multiple tests per assessment | Yes | Yes |
Video interviews are super convenient and let you dive deeper into a candidate’s skills and background.
TestGorilla’s one-way video interviews give you the flexibility to assess responses in your own time from any device. You can watch candidates' videos at any speed you wish using the playback speed control function.
You can add up to 20 custom questions, as well as an intro or outro video, giving candidates a personalized experience. Time limits for answers can be set to between 30 seconds and two minutes.
It’s easy to review interview responses collaboratively by setting permissions for team members and adding comments and ratings.
Paradox offers both live and prerecorded video interviews.
Its conversational chatbot, Olivia, invites candidates to record a video response or book a live interview with your team. You get a scheduling tool to book live interviews.
For one-way interviews, the chatbot asks questions through text or a prerecorded video. Candidates simply record their answers and click send.
However, it’s not clear if you can set a time limit for video answers or see the number of attempts made.
TestGorilla | Paradox | |
One-way video interviews | Yes | Yes |
Custom video questions | Yes | Yes |
Record the number of candidates’ attempts | Yes | Unknown |
Restrict maximum answer length | Yes | Unknown |
Record and play back on any device | Yes | Yes |
Rate and comment on video answers | Yes | Unknown |
Playback speed control | Yes | Unknown |
A positive hiring experience can contribute toward a higher completion rate and more candidates accepting your job offers.
Adding your brand to the platform helps candidates feel like the assessment is part of your recruitment process.
TestGorilla offers a smooth candidate experience.
You can personalize your assessments and invitations, as well as the unavoidable rejection emails, by adding your logo and brand colors, plus intro or outro videos. In addition, you can hire globally with TestGorilla’s localized platforms, available in 12 languages.
Candidates can take tests from any device without needing to log in. With most tests taking between 10 and 15 minutes, applicants avoid fatigue and feel like their time is being respected.
And once candidates have completed an English language assessment test, they’re redirected to create a TestGorilla Profile that allows them to view their results.
Paradox’s tests are highly visual. Short questions are accompanied by images featuring animated characters that help candidates answer questions intuitively.
These blue-skinned characters are gender, age, and race-neutral, helping you hire diverse teams. You’re able to add your brand colors and logo directly into images, including the characters’ clothing.
Rapid “me” or “not me” answers are used, but it’s not clear whether there are other answer types, such as a 1-5 scale, that give candidates more choices.
TestGorilla | Paradox | |
Your company’s intro and/or outro video | Yes | Yes |
Assessments branded with your company logo and colors | Yes | Yes |
Customizable invitation and rejection emails | Yes | Unknown |
No login required for candidates | Yes | Yes |
Mobile friendly | Yes | Yes |
Help and support for candidates | Yes | N/A |
Typical assessment length | 10-50 minutes | 2 minutes |
Qualifying questions prior to assessment | Yes | Yes |
Assessment providers should have a quality-control process that keeps questions relevant and easy to understand. This helps you test candidates at the highest standard and get greater completion rates.
TestGorilla makes sure you get candidate scores you can trust. Our rigorous quality control process includes:
A 28-step checklist before tests go live, including copywriter and psychometrician reviews
Tracking candidate speed and performance during tests to adjust difficulty levels
Using success rates for highly skilled professionals to detect question clarity issues
Alternating test questions from a larger pool to avoid answers being leaked online
Using client and candidate feedback to make continuous improvements to tests
Users can now also find scores – including percentile scores – on candidates’ result pages. In addition, you can assign a different weight to each test so that some count more than others in the overall assessment score.
Paradox’s assessments are based on decades of Big Five personality research. In addition, it has conducted more than 10 studies over two years with around 5000 participants to make its tests scientifically sound.
The company checks test-retest reliability, which measures how much answers differ when candidates retake a test. It also uses statistical analysis to check how different images impact responses.
It’s not clear if Paradox replaces questions after reaching an exposure limit or whether it uses algorithms to continuously improve tests.
TestGorilla | Paradox | |
Proprietary algorithms that continuously improve the quality of each test | Yes | Unknown |
Extensive quality checks before tests go live | Yes | Yes |
Questions replaced after reaching exposure limit | Yes | Unknown |
Customer feedback used to improve tests | Yes | Unknown |
Test-taker feedback used to improve tests | Yes | Unknown |
Having access to friendly, helpful advice can make your hiring process that bit easier. To this end, many providers include email, chat, ticketing, and phone-based customer support in their packages.
TestGorilla offers timely support via email and live chat. You can also submit online tickets.
To get you started, our team takes you through a training and onboarding tour free of charge. In addition, our FAQs and help center guide you through our platform’s features.
You can reach Paradox by email and phone. Its conversational chatbot can also handle general inquiries, but there’s no live chat with a human agent.
The FAQ section isn’t very robust, but there’s a client-only support center available. The resource center – containing e-books, webinars, and more – provides hiring guidance.
TestGorilla | Paradox | |
Live chat | Yes | Yes |
Help center | Yes | Yes |
Email support | Yes | Yes |
Training and onboarding tour | Yes | No |
Phone assistance | No | Yes |
Many pre-employment assessment plans are billed on an annual or monthly subscription basis. Expect to pay for a set of assessments for the whole year or per assessment on a pay-as-you-go plan.
TestGorilla has a plan for every business size. Pricing scales depending on how many full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) you have. Note that one FTE equals one person who works 40 hours per week. So if you had two people working 20 hours per week each, they would count as one FTE. Pricing for each plan is as follows:
Free: Full access to five free tests – including all personality tests – and up to five custom questions.
Starter from $75 USD per month ($900 per year paid upfront for 1–15 FTEs) - start with skills-based hiring for all roles, which includes unlimited test library access and the ability to create unlimited assessments.
Pro from $115 USD per month ($1,380 per year paid upfront for 1–15 FTE). Get everything in Starter plus advanced features such as API and ATS integrations, one-way video interview questions, and custom branding for assessments.
There’s also the option to pay monthly for companies with more than 15 FTEs, starting from $85 USD per month for Starter and $130 per month for Pro.
Companies with more than 50 FTEs get a 15-day trial of the Starter and Pro plans.
Paradox doesn’t show pricing on its site, so you’ll need to get in touch with the company.
TestGorilla | Paradox | ||
Plan | Price | Unknown | |
Free | $0 | ||
Starter | From $75 USD per month ($900 per year paid upfront for companies with 1-15 FTEs) | ||
Pro | From $115 USD per month ($1,380 per year paid upfront) for 1-15 FTEs |
An assessment platform that’s easy to use saves your hiring team time and effort. Look for a product with intuitive navigation and features that speed up your workflow.
TestGorilla is extremely easy to use. Building your assessment is quick and intuitive, as the library will recommend tests when you input a role or skill. There’s also an assessment search feature and the ability to preview tests.
You always have a bird’s eye view of all applicants, complete with their hiring stage, assessment scores, and percentile. Bulk actions enable you to select multiple candidates across all pages.
Plus, individual reports are just a click away. Candidate PDF Reports now give users insights into candidates' strengths and weaknesses in a specific area. You can even share these results with other team members.
At the same time, new filters make it simple to compare candidates’ test scores, as well as their answers to custom and multiple-choice questions.
Find out what sets TestGorilla apart in hiring. Sign up for our free plan and access comprehensive tools for effective candidate screening.
Taking Paradox’s tests is intuitive, thanks to its imagery and “me” or “not me” design. It’s also user-friendly on any device.
Tests take up to five minutes, and your hiring team gets quick results on candidates’ personality types and cognitive abilities.
The conversational chatbot sends candidates assessment invites and answers general questions, giving them an integrated experience and saving your company time.
Both TestGorilla and Paradox offer high-quality pre-employment assessments, helping you shortlist top applicants.
While Paradox’s tests take just five minutes maximum to complete and include intuitive imagery, they only assess personality types and cognitive ability.
By contrast, TestGorilla has a library of more than 400+ tests, including situational judgment, role-based skills, culture fit, software development, and programming, on top of personality and cognitive testing.
Paradox’s tests also have limited answer types, while TestGorilla combines multiple-choice with essay, file upload, and others. TestGorilla also offers more personalization through custom questions and tests.
TestGorilla’s rigorous quality control is hard to challenge. With a 28-step process, plus question rotation and replacement, and algorithm-led improvement, the platform continuously ensures its questions are assessing the appropriate skills.
However, it’s not clear whether Paradox rotates and replaces questions or uses algorithms to improve test quality.
In short, TestGorilla can fulfill your assessment needs no matter what stage your business is at.
By using pre-employment assessments, you’re meeting your top candidates more quickly. Not only are you saving time otherwise spent on prescreening calls, but you’re also saving money in the long run by hiring candidates with the best skills and culture fit.
TestGorilla is the first choice for many businesses growing their teams. Check out our plans and get started today.
Why not try TestGorilla for free, and see what happens when you put skills first.
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