Pre-employment screening lays the foundations for hiring the best person for a role. It gives you accurate, unbiased insights into the skills and workplace behaviors of a potential candidates without the hassle of time-consuming resume reviews or other costly hiring processes.
TestGorilla and The Predictive Index are two providers in the pre-employment screening space. This article compares them and explains why TestGorilla is the best choice for your skills testing needs.
TestGorilla is a top-rated talent assessment software as a service (SaaS). We offer science-backed HR screening tests designed to replace resumes and help recruiters and hiring managers make better hiring decisions faster and without bias.
At the center of TestGorilla’s platform are its personality and skills tests that help you get to know your candidates better and hire the best.
TestGorilla’s test library contains “400+” tests. You can use these to build the perfect assessment for your candidates and customize questions.
TestGorilla saves you time and money. We remove the need to screen endless resumes or conduct round after round of pre-screening interviews. Our platform shortens the screening process and reduces the potential for mis-hires by providing science-backed insights into candidates’ skills and personalities.
For your applicants, TestGorilla provides a positive recruitment experience. Our platform is very easy to use and keeps them updated on their progress.
The Predictive Index is a talent optimization platform offering five complementary products: PI Hire, PI Inspire, PI Design, PI Diagnose, and PI Perform.
PI Hire is a pre-employment testing tool that helps recruiters find the right person for the job. It offers insights into a candidate’s workplace behavior and whether they’d be a good cultural fit for the organization. This approach helps prevent mis-hires and improve retention.
PI Inspire helps managers better manage and motivate their teams. PI Design is a tool for building successful teams. PI Diagnose identifies issues and suggests solutions to improve workplace culture. PI Perform is a performance management solution that helps managers track employees’ work and recognize outstanding employees.
TestGorilla’s and The Predictive Index’s test libraries offer a range of tests you can use during your pre-employment screening.
TestGorilla revolutionizes hiring with diverse, bias-free tests and a user-friendly platform. See the difference for yourself - sign up for a free live demo today!
TestGorilla’s test library includes “400+” ready-made tests for you to choose from when building an assessment. These include tests for:
Language skills
Situational judgment
Specific programming, software, and other role-related skills
We continuously update our test library with new tests – for instance, we now offer a Working with Generative AI test.
In addition to these pre-made tests, you can also personalize your assessments with custom questions in different formats:
Essay
Multiple choice
Video
File upload
Coding task
We’ve designed our tests for hiring teams around the world, which is why we offer localized websites in 12 different languages.
The Predictive Index offers three key assessments: the PI Job Assessment™, the PI Behavioral Assessment, and the PI Cognitive Assessment. In contrast to TestGorilla’s cognitive ability and personality tests—which assess specific traits and can be mixed and matched to create custom assessments according to your needs—each of The Predictive Index’s assessments span multiple focus areas.
The PI Job Assessment™ identifies the behavioral traits and cognitive abilities relevant to a role.
The PI Behavioral Assessment provides insights into whether someone’s personality is the right fit for a role. It does this by measuring four traits: dominance, extraversion, patience, and formality. It’s an untimed test that takes around six minutes to complete.
The PI Cognitive Assessment assesses a candidate’s learning speed, problem-solving ability, and depth of understanding. It’s a timed test that takes 12 minutes to complete.
The Predictive Index also has an Interview Builder that lets you follow up assessments with custom interview questions. The Predictive Index will automatically suggest questions based on a candidate’s responses – or you can create your own questions.
| TestGorilla | The Predictive Index |
Cognitive ability tests | Yes | Yes |
Situational judgment tests | Yes | Yes |
Job-specific tests | Yes | Yes |
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 tests | Yes | Yes |
Your own custom tests | No | |
Custom questions per assessment | Yes | Yes |
Test recommendations for each job role | Yes | Yes |
Multiple tests per assessment | Yes | N/A |
When hiring developers, you can use a range of different pre-employment screening tests to assess skills, such as coding and debugging. You should also assess a candidate’s ability to code in different programming languages and use different development frameworks.
TestGorilla offers a range of ready-to-use coding tests. You can use these to assess a candidate’s specific tech skills, such as working with arrays, debugging, and coding. We also offer a language-agnostic coding test: one test, 20 programming languages. This allows candidates to answer programming questions in whichever coding language they’re most comfortable with.
You can also test their experience with certain frameworks, such as React Native and Flutter, and other programming tools. Our platform lets you create customized coding questions as well as your own coding challenges.
The Predictive Index can be used for hiring developers. The PI Cognitive Assessment can shed light on a user’s ability to think critically, and you can add custom interview questions related to coding. However, The Predictive Index doesn’t include any features designed to test specific developer-related skills.
TestGorilla | The Predictive Index | |
Coding languages | JavaScript, Java, Python, PHP, C, C#, C++, SQL, Kotlin, Ruby, TypeScript, Go, R, Scala, Swift, Julia, Elixir, Dart, Perl, Rust, and Erlang | N/A |
Web-development frameworks | Yes | No |
Mobile-development frameworks | Yes | No |
Algorithmic-thinking challenges | Yes | No |
Debugging challenges | Yes | No |
Language-specific concept challenges | Yes | No |
Your own custom coding challenges | Yes | No |
Code-playback function | Yes | No |
Automated scoring | Yes | No |
Live peer coding | No | No |
Video interviews are a handy feature to gain a deeper understanding of your candidates’ skills and enhance their assessment experience. These include one-way video interviews, live interviews, and custom video questions.
TestGorilla lets you create custom video questions in your assessments for one-way video interviews. If you ask the right questions, you can even use these to replace pre-employment screening interviews.
TestGorilla’s platform enables you to set the maximum length of the applicant’s response to 30, 60, or 120 seconds.
The Predictive Index doesn’t have video interview features.
It does, however, suggest potential interview questions for candidates based on their responses to the PI Behavioral and Cognitive Assessments. You can use these questions during subsequent video interviews.
The Predictive Index has also published guides on conducting remote video interviews.
TestGorilla | The Predictive Index | |
One-way video interview | Yes | No |
Custom video questions | Yes | No |
Record the number of candidate attempts | Yes | No |
Restrict maximum answer length | Yes | No |
Record and playback on any device | Yes | No |
Rate and comment on video answers | Yes | No |
The availability of features such as test length, compatibility with mobile devices, and candidate support encourage applicants to complete assessments.
Many pre-employment screening providers also offer company branding options. Branding your assessments makes the pre-employment screening experience more memorable for your candidates.
TestGorilla offers several features designed to enhance the candidate experience.
Firstly, our assessments are mobile-friendly, enabling your candidates to access them from anywhere.
Assessments are quick, and many candidates prefer them to lengthy resumes and cover letters.
Effective communication is one of our priorities, so we enable you to send updates about the recruitment process to candidates with just a few clicks. Candidates who take an English-language assessment can create a TestGorilla account to view their assessment results and check the status of past and current assessments.
Our platform also lets you add your company details, logo, and colors to assessments. You can also start your assessments with a branded introduction video. This helps give candidates a cohesive and memorable pre-employment testing experience.
In addition, TestGorilla enables you to create a hiring experience for candidates around the world in their native language. Assessments can be delivered in 12 different languages.
The Predictive Index offers a positive candidate experience. Designed to provide one data point in a larger set, it supports effective and fair hiring decisions.
It also supports more than 65 languages.
Candidates can email customer support with any questions they have.
The Predictive Index doesn’t offer company branding options.
TestGorilla | The Predictive Index | |
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 | Yes |
Mobile friendly | Yes | Yes |
Help and support for your candidates | Yes | Yes |
Typical assessment length | 30-60 minutes | 6-12 minutes |
Qualifying questions prior to assessment | Yes | No |
Your pre-employment assessments must accommodate the size of your business. For this reason, they should offer features that cater to both enterprises and startups.
When considering your options, look for features such as ATS integration, API access, candidate tracking, and compliance.
TestGorilla helps startups and large enterprises alike with their pre-employment screening needs. We support startups in expanding their workforces by offering a free forever plan and scalable paid plans.
At the enterprise level, TestGorilla’s tests support global recruitment with localized websites in 12 different languages.
Large enterprises often receive hundreds, if not thousands, of applications for a single role. TestGorilla makes large-scale hiring processes more efficient with features such as ATS integration, API access, and GDPR compliance.
In addition, TestGorilla makes it easy for your hiring team to collaborate on candidate reviews. Anyone on your team with the right permissions can review candidates’ responses and add comments to candidate reports.
Businesses of all sizes can use The Predictive Index’s assessments.
It supports scaling and enterprise businesses with features such as ATS integration and GDPR compliance. You can also manage bulk recruitment by assigning multiple users to your account.
The Predictive Index also makes hiring more collaborative by enabling multiple employees to contribute to a job description. Current employees who will work with the person hired for your open role can submit details about the traits and responsibilities they think are important to that role. You can use this information to craft a more accurate job description that reflects a position’s full scope.
| TestGorilla | The Predictive Index |
ATS integration | Yes | Yes |
Multiple users and role-based rights management | Yes | Yes |
GDPR compliant | Yes | Yes |
Multiple candidate invitation options | Yes | Yes |
Public links to invite candidates | Yes | Yes |
Public links for each candidate source | Yes | Yes |
Bulk invite candidates (CSV/XLSX upload) | Yes | Yes |
Track candidate stages from invited to hired | Yes | Yes |
API access | Yes | Yes |
Bulk actions to manage candidates | Yes | Yes |
When you use pre-employment tests to inform hiring decisions, you need to know you can rely on the results.
Quality control features include performing extensive testing and quality checks before release, replacing test questions frequently, and responding to employer and candidate feedback.
You can rely on TestGorilla’s test library for quality pre-employment screening assessments. Each test goes through a 28-step quality control process involving reviews by:
Psychometrics experts
Subject-matter experts
Peer-reviewers
Copywriters
Sample testers
Other quality-assurance features include regular reviews of test content to ensure it’s clear and tests for the right skill. We also continuously collect customer and candidate feedback to improve our platform.
The PI Science, Content, and Product teams are involved in developing all interview questions on The Predictive Index.
Independent reviewers then assess questions against strict criteria to ensure they match test intent before they’re validated and added to the platform.
The Predictive Index tests were developed according to the guidelines of the International Test Commission, the American Psychological Association, and the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology.
The European Federation of Psychologists’ Associations has also independently certified the platform.
TestGorilla | The Predictive Index | |
Proprietary algorithms that continuously improve the quality of each test | Yes | No |
Extensive quality checks before tests go live | Yes | Yes |
Questions replaced after reaching exposure limit | Yes | No |
Customer feedback used to improve tests | Yes | No |
Test-taker feedback used to improve tests | Yes | No |
Cheating results in giving some candidates an unfair advantage during the pre-employment screening process. That’s why anti-cheating measures are essential to ensuring your testing is fair and equal.
These measures also help guarantee that results accurately reflect a candidate’s skills, abilities, and personality.
TestGorilla offers several anti-cheating measures, including:
Cycled questions so different questions appear each time a candidate takes a test
Timed tests, which limit a candidate’s ability to search for answers
Disabling copy and paste, which reduces the risk of leaking questions
There are also candidate-monitoring settings such as 30-second snapshots using the candidate’s webcam during an assessment (with the candidate’s permission).
Full-screen tracking alerts you if a candidate moves to another window (to research an answer, for example).
There are no right or wrong answers on a PI Behavioral Assessment, so cheating is less likely to occur. Candidates simply indicate their preference between two lists of adjectives.
The PI Cognitive Assessment was designed to reduce the opportunity for cheating. In a 12-minute assessment, candidates have little time to seek help or research an answer. Each candidate also receives a unique set of questions, so they can’t share questions with other candidates.
TestGorilla | The Predictive Index | |
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 | Yes |
Large question pool for each test | Yes (100+) | Yes (3,000) |
Questions and answers not visible to employers to protect test integrity | Yes | Yes |
Time limit on tests | Yes (typically 10 minutes) | Yes (PI Cognitive Assessment) |
Copy-paste disabled | Yes | No |
Reporting and analytics help you understand a candidate’s test results and use them to make the right hiring decisions. They offer insights into a candidate’s responses, as well as their overall performance.
This information helps you identify whether they’re the right person for the job and understand how to manage and motivate them in the workplace.
Our platform gives you access to each candidate’s results and generates reports for each candidate. Reports show an applicant’s overall score and score by test. You can weight individual tests to prioritize certain skills when evaluating candidates’ overall scores. In addition, you can use scoring benchmarks to quickly compare candidates’ results.
Results are grouped to aid understanding and identify any issues with the testing. Within the report, you have a clear explanation of results and you can also add your own internal notes.
You can download reports in PDF, XLSX, or CSV format to easily print and share them with your hiring team.
The Predictive Index offers several AI-driven analytics and reporting tools:
PI Design uses test results to analyze a team’s strengths, weaknesses, and behaviors
PI Team Discovery™ helps build teams that align with your business strategy
PI Inspire gives suggestions on how managers can bring out the best in their employees
PI Diagnose identifies any issues with your talent strategy and provides possible solutions
The platform also produces personalized interview guides based on a candidate’s cognitive and behavioral assessments.
You can compare candidates against one another and benchmark them against your current employees.
The Predictive Index also produces personalized interview guides based on a candidate’s cognitive and behavioral assessment results.
TestGorilla | The Predictive Index | |
PDF reports of assessments and individual candidates | Yes | Yes |
Excel and CSV reports of assessments and individual candidates | Yes | Yes |
Comprehensive overview for all current and past candidates | Yes | Yes |
Scoring benchmarks for candidates (including percentile rank scoring) | Yes | No |
Option to add your ratings and personal notes for candidates | Yes | No |
Good customer support is essential when first setting up your pre-employment assessments and when any issues arise. Most providers offer a combination of live chat, phone, or email support.
We offer support via email and chat. Our Pro customers also receive a customer support service-level agreement.
We also publish user guides and other resources for companies and candidates in our help center. These cover a range of topics, including how to develop an effective screening test and how to format test questions.
With TestGorilla, you also get a training and onboarding tour, where we explain all key features of the platform and how to use them.
All of The Predictive Index’s plans come with 24/7 email support. Phone support is also available (Monday-Friday).
The Predictive Index’s website contains a resource and learning library which covers specific support topics and FAQs. It also includes webinars, courses, and templates.
TestGorilla | The Predictive Index | |
Live chat | Yes | No |
Help center | Yes | Yes |
Email support | Yes | Yes |
Training and onboarding tour | Yes | Yes |
Phone assistance | No | Yes |
Most pre-employment testing providers require a monthly or annual subscription fee. Check the details of these carefully, as the features and add-ons can vary.
Many providers offer a free trial or plan to test their product. Some prefer to provide customized quotes rather than publish their pricing.
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TestGorilla offers three pricing plans with no extra hidden costs:
Free forever at $0: Provides full access to five free tests with five custom questions.
Starter from $75 per month: Offers unlimited simultaneous assessments.
Pro from $115 per month: Includes everything in the Starter plan plus ATS integrations, API access, video questions, and custom branded assessments.
Pricing for the Starter and Pro plans depends on the number of full-time equivalent employees (FTEs) in your organization. Two part-time employees who each work 20 hours per week are equivalent to one FTE, for example.
The Starter plan costs $75 per month for companies with up to 15 FTEs, while the Pro plan costs $115 per month for companies with up to 15 FTEs. To give an example of how pricing scales with company size, the Starter plan costs $208 per month and the Pro plan costs $310 per month for a company with 50 FTEs.
Companies with up to 15 FTEs must sign up for an annual plan. Larger companies can choose either monthly or annual pricing.
With The Predictive Index, you can subscribe to a plan that gives you access to one or more of its products. Prices are by quote only, although The Predictive Index says that PI Hire starts at $4,950 per year. Only annual subscriptions are available.
PI Design offers a basic free plan, which includes the PI Behavioral Assessment. There’s no free plan available for PI Hire, but you can try it out for free for seven days (the PI Cognitive Assessment isn’t included in the trial).
TestGorilla |
| Predictive Index | |
Plan | Price | Plan | Price |
Free | $0 | PI Design (Free) | $0 |
Starter | From $75 USD per month ($900 per year, paid upfront, for teams of 1-15 FTEs) | PI Design (Pro) | From $4,950 per year |
Pro | From $115 USD per month ($1,380 per year, paid upfront, for teams of 1-15 FTEs) | PI Hire | Contact PI |
|
| PI Inspire | Contact PI |
|
| PI Diagnose | Contact PI |
|
| PI Perform | Contact PI |
Both employee and candidate engagement with your pre-employment testing requires an easy-to-use platform. Features to look out for include intuitive layout and design, easy navigation, and test creation.
Our platform was designed with ease of use in mind. Its intuitive design enables you to set up and send tests to many candidates at once in just a few clicks. It formats test reports to help you quickly understand and interpret the results.
On the candidate’s side, our tests are also very easy to navigate. You can decide to send notifications to candidates to keep them updated at each step of the way. Candidates can view their results after completing an assessment by creating a TestGorilla account.
The Predictive Index’s assessments are quick and easy to use, taking no more than 12 minutes to complete. Its practical interface makes setting up and completing tests straightforward.
Candidates don’t get feedback on their test results when using The Predictive Index.
TestGorilla and The Predictive Index offer two different approaches to pre-employment testing. TestGorilla offers an extensive test library with 400+ tests to create unique role-specific assessments.
The Predictive Index offers three central tests to better understand candidates’ behavioral traits and cognitive abilities.
TestGorilla offers tests for developer roles, customized branding, and transparent pricing. Its level of customization not only helps you choose the right person for the job – it also ensures they stay with your organization long term. This is also what gives TestGorilla an edge over The Predictive Index.
Relying on high-quality pre-employment testing is a no-brainer when it comes to your business. It helps you hire better candidates, reduces bias in the recruitment process, and saves you the time and cost of reviewing endless resumes.
TestGorilla is committed to helping recruitment teams make better hiring decisions faster and bias-free. Learn more about how we can help you streamline recruitment during a free 30-minute live demo with a member of our team.
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