TestGorilla vs. Ducknowl

Testing the skills and qualities of job applicants is crucial, as it not only helps to verify that an applicant is proficient in the skills they’ve listed on their resume but also evaluates whether they would be a good fit for your company culture.

If you want to make better acquisition decisions and eliminate human bias from your hiring process, it’s essential to use the right pre-employment testing software. To help you decide between your options, this guide compares TestGorilla and Ducknowl.

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How does TestGorilla work? 

TestGorilla is a pre-employment screening platform that lets you evaluate candidates based on their cognitive abilities, personality traits, technical skills, and more. All TestGorilla plans include training to help your hiring team get the most out of pre-employment testing.

One of the key advantages of TestGorilla’s platform is flexibility. You can easily mix and match more than 300 tests to create a tailored assessment for any job role. You can also add custom questions to gain additional insights into an applicant’s problem-solving approach. 

Whether you’re a startup with a single hiring need or an enterprise-scale company with many positions to fill, TestGorilla caters to companies of all sizes. In fact, TestGorilla even offers a Free plan that businesses can use to start screening job applicants at no cost.

How does Ducknowl work? 

Ducknowl (Duck’n’owl) is a talent screening and assessment platform. It offers resume screening, skills assessments, and video interviewing through a web interface.

Companies contact Ducknowl for a custom employee screening and assessment setup that varies in price based on its complexity and the company size. 

Ducknowl is designed to reduce the amount of paperwork involved in the hiring process by offering prescreening and interviews through digital means.

TestGorilla vs. Ducknowl: Test libraries

Both TestGorilla and Ducknowl have a library of tests you can use to evaluate applicants. The number and quality of these tests are very important, as they define how accurately you’ll be able to assess applicants.

TestGorilla’s test library

TestGorilla has a massive library of more than 300 tests in a wide range of categories, including:

• Situational judgment
• Job-specific skills
• Language skills
• Software skills
• Programming skills
• Personality and culture
• Cognitive ability

The tests are available in more than 10 languages. You can create a customized assessment by combining multiple tests from the library and adding custom questions to your assessments. 

You can choose from a variety of question formats, including multiple-choice, text, audio, video, and file uploads. 

Ducknowl’s test library

Ducknowl has a library of more than 200 tests listed in several general categories. These include general aptitude, computer literacy, business intelligence, management, sales and marketing, and software development. 

Ducknowl doesn’t specifically mention important tests such as language and culture-add, but companies can collaborate with Ducknowl to create custom tests that suit their needs. 

Test libraries: Comparison chart at a glance

	TestGorilla	Ducknowl
Cognitive ability tests	Yes	Yes
Situational judgment tests	Yes	Yes
Job-specific tests	Yes	Yes
Software tests	Yes	Yes
Programming tests (including coding challenges)	Yes	Yes
Language tests	Yes	N/A
Personality tests	Yes	Yes
Culture-add test	Yes	N/A
Motivation test	Yes	N/A
Your own custom tests	Yes	Yes
Custom questions per assessment	Yes	Yes
Test recommendations for each job role	Yes	N/A
Multiple tests per assessment	Yes	N/A

TestGorilla vs. Ducknowl: Functionalities for hiring developers

Software development requires a particularly rigorous set of tests to ensure you get the best programmers on your teams. It’s all too easy for applicants to overstate their skills on their resumes. 

Programming skills tests enable candidates to prove they really have the capabilities to perform the job.

Hiring developers with TestGorilla

TestGorilla’s comprehensive library of tests includes more than 85 programming skills tests and 50 plus software skills tests. 

With TestGorilla, you can easily assess an applicant’s proficiency with popular programming languages like C++, Node.js, Python, PHP, and many others. You can also evaluate mobile app development, web development, and smart contract development skills.

You can add your own coding problems or debugging challenges to create a more tailored assessment. TestGorilla also grades programming tests, saving hiring managers valuable time and ensuring a fair and unbiased evaluation process. 

Hiring developers with Ducknowl 

Ducknowl offers software programming skills and IT skills as technical assessments, but the focus is very much on soft skills. 

The types of tests listed for software development are business analysis, project management, and cloud computing, with no mention of specific programming languages or coding frameworks. 

Functionalities for hiring developers: Comparison chart at a glance

	TestGorilla	Ducknowl
Coding languages	JavaScript, Java, Python, PHP, C, C#, C++, SQL, Kotlin, Ruby, TypeScript, Go, R, Scala, React, and Swift	N/A
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
Your own custom coding challenges	Yes	Yes
Code-playback function	Yes	N/A
Automated scoring	Yes	Yes
Live peer coding	No	No

TestGorilla vs. Ducknowl: Video interviews

Video interviews are conducted via video conferencing software, enabling hiring managers to assess candidates remotely. There are several ways to perform video interviews, including live interviews and one-way interviews with prerecorded questions. 

TestGorilla’s video interviews

With TestGorilla, you can include custom one-way video questions in your assessments, requiring candidates to record video responses with limits on length and attempts. 

Video interviews can be played back on any device and offer the ability to leave ratings and comments to share with your team.

There’s even the option for custom video questions, where hiring managers can add personalized questions to the interview process.

Ducknowl’s video interviews

Ducknowl offers both live video and prerecorded video interviewing. The live video feature is quite straightforward, letting recruiters conduct a one-to-one interview with candidates like they could with any video conferencing software. 

Employers can create basic video interviews by prerecording questions and assigning a time limit to answer them. Completed video interviews can be shared with other members of the hiring team to garner feedback on applicants’ responses. 

However, some features, like recording the number of candidates’ attempts, don’t appear to be supported.

Video interviews: Comparison chart at a glance

	TestGorilla	Ducknowl
One-way video interview	Yes	Yes
Custom video questions	Yes	Yes
Record the number of candidates’ attempts	Yes	N/A
Restrict maximum answer length	Yes	N/A
Record and playback on any device	Yes	N/A
Rate and comment video answers	Yes	N/A

TestGorilla vs. Ducknowl: Candidate experience and company branding

An excellent hiring experience gives applicants a good impression of your company from the beginning. 

Taking advantage of features such as company-branded assessments, mobile-friendly tests, and intro videos that create a professional experience can attract the best candidates and ensure they agree to join your company when you choose to offer them the job.

The candidate experience with TestGorilla

TestGorilla offers qualifying questions before the assessment to prevent unqualified candidates from wasting their time.

Our software lets you customize assessments with your company’s logo and brand colors, as well as start with a personalized welcome video and end with a link to your website.

Applicants can access assessments on any device without having to create a TestGorilla account. If they ever have any questions about the testing process, they can contact our customer support for assistance.

The candidate experience with Ducknowl

Ducknowl doesn’t specify whether it offers platform branding. 

However, it’s possible to integrate Ducknowl with a company website using its API, but this is a difficult and expensive process, particularly when compared to more robust prescreening services that offer built-in branding with your company logo and colors.

Candidate experience and company branding: Comparison chart at a glance

	TestGorilla	Ducknowl
Your company’s intro and/or outro video	Yes	N/A
Assessments branded with your company logo and colors	Yes	N/A
Customizable invitation and rejection emails	Yes	N/A
No login required for candidates	Yes	N/A
Mobile friendly	Yes	N/A
Help and support for candidates	Yes	N/A
Typical assessment length	10-30 minutes	20-30 minutes
Qualifying questions prior to assessment	Yes	N/A
Redirect candidates to a URL of your choice after finishing an assessment	Yes	N/A

TestGorilla vs. Ducknowl: Enterprise and startup friendliness

Regardless of your organization’s size, it’s important to choose a pre-employment testing platform that will accommodate your company’s hiring needs in the future. 

Larger businesses must look for pre-employment testing with features that make evaluating a large number of candidates easy. 

TestGorilla’s enterprise and startup friendliness

TestGorilla offers flexible plans to meet the needs of businesses of all sizes. 

For organizations with a global presence, TestGorilla is an excellent product. Our website and tests are available in more than 10 languages.

Hiring for multiple positions at once is a breeze with TestGorilla’s bulk candidate invitations. You can track how candidates discover your company’s open roles by creating unique public links for each job board you use.

Integrating TestGorilla with popular ATS platforms such as JazzHR and SmartRecruiters is a seamless process. For enterprise-scale companies that use an internal ATS, we offer an API for easy integration.

Ducknowl’s enterprise and startup friendliness

Ducknowl doesn’t offer set plans from which to choose. Instead, it offers a bespoke service for each business. For more complex setups, there’s an API that companies can use to interact with Ducknowl’s system.

Ducknowl does offer the option to integrate with a few other systems, including JazzHR, Greenhouse, Zoho, SmartRecruiters, LinkedIn, and Indeed. 

However, it doesn’t appear to offer some important features, such as role-based rights management and bulk invites to candidates from CSV uploads.

Enterprise and startup friendliness: Comparison chart at a glance

	TestGorilla	Ducknowl
ATS integration	Yes	Yes
Multiple users and role-based rights management	Yes	N/A
GDPR compliant	Yes	Yes
Multiple candidate invitation options	Yes	N/A
Public links to invite candidates	Yes	Yes
Public links for each candidate source	Yes	N/A
Bulk invite candidates (CSV/XLSX upload)	Yes	N/A
Track candidate stages from invited to hired	Yes	N/A
API access	Yes	Yes
Bulk actions to manage candidates	Yes	N/A

TestGorilla vs. Ducknowl: Quality control

Quality control in applicant prescreening tests ensures they are accurately evaluating the skills you really want from your employees. It helps to eliminate biases and ensures you can continually improve your testing through anonymous applicant feedback.

TestGorilla’s quality-control processes

TestGorilla places a high emphasis on quality control when developing and administering tests. 

Our tests are data-driven and undergo rigorous quality-control procedures to ensure validity and reliability. TestGorilla’s proprietary algorithms continually enhance test quality and ensure they provide accurate results.

TestGorilla regularly solicits feedback from both applicants and recruiters. This feedback helps us identify areas for development and make necessary changes to improve our testing process.

Each TestGorilla test comprises a minimum of 100 questions, but candidates will only see 12-20 questions during each test. This prevents overexposure and ensures the fairness and accuracy of the assessment. 

Furthermore, we retire questions from the question bank after extended usage to maintain fresh and accurate assessments.

Ducknowl’s quality-control processes

There’s no information to suggest that Ducknowl implements quality-control measures when developing its skills assessments.

Quality control: Comparison chart at a glance

	TestGorilla	Ducknowl
Proprietary algorithms that continuously improve the quality of each test	Yes	N/A
Extensive quality checks before tests go live	Yes	N/A
Questions replaced after reaching exposure limit	Yes	N/A
Customer feedback used to improve tests	Yes	N/A
Test-taker feedback used to improve tests	Yes	N/A

TestGorilla vs. Ducknowl: Anti-cheating measures

Falsifying prescreening job applications is all too prevalent, with candidates often looking up answers online or getting assistance from others. So, for pre-employment tests to have any validity, you must have strong anti-cheating measures in place.

TestGorilla’s anti-cheating measures

TestGorilla implements various measures to ensure that candidates don’t cheat while taking assessments. 

Copy and paste is disabled by default, preventing candidates from leaking questions. Plus, test-takers see a different set of questions each time they attempt an assessment.

TestGorilla also takes steps to prevent candidates from researching during assessments. Our platform lets you enforce time limits so candidates can’t look up answers. 

The system notifies you if a candidate opens another window during a test, and you can choose to record a candidate’s screen or take snapshots using their webcam with the candidate’s permission.

Ducknowl’s anti-cheating measures

Ducknowl detects when candidates move their mouse away from the test window and issues them a warning. This stops applicants from researching the answers to test questions online. 

The platform can also be set to take screenshots of test-takers so recruiters can check if they have anyone in the room helping them. However, no further anti-cheating measures are listed on the Ducknowl website.

Anti-cheating measures: Comparison chart at a glance

	TestGorilla	Ducknowl
IP address logging (to avoid multiple attempts by the same candidate)	Yes	N/A
Logging of a candidate’s location	Yes	N/A
Webcam snapshots (with the option to turn on/off)	Yes	Yes
Full-screen mode detection (to avoid research during the test)	Yes	Yes
Randomized questions per test	Yes	N/A
Large question pool for each test	Yes (100+)	N/A
Questions and answers not visible to employers to protect test integrity	Yes	N/A
Time limit on tests	Yes (typically 10 minutes)	N/A
Copy-paste disabled	Yes	N/A

TestGorilla vs. Ducknowl: Reporting and analytics

Top-rated employee prescreening platforms show you detailed analytics of your applicants so you can choose the best candidates. It’s useful to be able to export these reports into PDFs, Excel, and CSV, too, so you can better analyze your potential workforce in other applications.

TestGorilla’s reporting and analytics features

TestGorilla presents candidates’ assessment results in an easily digestible, user-friendly report. You can efficiently view each applicant’s performance, including scores and responses for each test section, as well as compare and rank candidates based on their abilities.

Additionally, our reporting feature enables you to add notes and comments to reports, providing additional context and insights for your team. You can share these reports with ease in PDF, XLSX, or CSV format, or export them directly to your ATS, streamlining your hiring process.

Ducknowl’s reporting and analytics features

Ducknowl displays applicants’ performance with level indicators showing how they ranked on basic, intermediate, and advanced level questions. It also breaks down scores by question category.

However, Ducknowl’s website doesn’t list features like PDF reports and Excel exports, so it appears these important features are not available.

Reporting and analytics: Comparison chart at a glance

	TestGorilla	Ducknowl
PDF reports of assessments and individual candidates	Yes	N/A
Excel and CSV reports of assessments and individual candidates	Yes	N/A
Comprehensive overview of all current and past candidates	Yes	N/A
Scoring benchmarks for candidates (including percentile rank scoring)	Yes	N/A
Add your ratings and personal notes for candidates	Yes	N/A

TestGorilla vs. Ducknowl: Customer support

It’s always important for a business-critical system like applicant prescreening to have readily available customer support. Ideally, support should be accessible for both you as a company and for the applicants themselves. 

Further to this, look for platforms that offer support via phone, email, and live chat, so you can get answers to your queries through the method you prefer.

TestGorilla’s customer support

TestGorilla goes beyond the call of duty with customer support, offering live chat, email support, and a huge help center full of information on how to get the best from the system. 

Both your company and test candidates can be directly supported by TestGorilla, so the amount of time you need to spend assisting applicants is minimized.

Ducknowl’s customer support

Ducknowl has a limited set of pages outlining its products and services. These pages are focused on the benefits of prescreening applicants and lack detail on the specifics of the Ducknowl platform. 

Although you can schedule a live demo of the system through Ducknowl’s website, it has relatively limited customer support, and the only way to get in touch is via email.

Customer support: Comparison chart at a glance

	TestGorilla	Ducknowl
Live chat	Yes	N/A
Help center	Yes	N/A
Email support	Yes	Yes
Training and onboarding tour	Yes	Yes
Phone assistance	No	N/A

TestGorilla vs. Ducknowl: Pricing

Pre-employment testing platforms typically offer pricing on an annual subscription model. In most cases, the cost rises based on the number of applicants and tests performed.

TestGorilla’s pricing

TestGorilla has transparent pricing, with four pricing options to suit any need. Plans are billed annually.

• The Free plan is free forever, with an unlimited number of assessments created from a select pool of tests. There are 10 free tests you can use, which include HR fundamentals, talent acquisition, and JavaScript.
• The Pay as you go plan at $312 per year gives you access to all tests in the TestGorilla library. You can use this plan to test up to 100 applicants a year with one assessment. Additional assessments cost $150 each. 
• The Scale plan at $3,900 per year allows you to test up to 1,500 candidates a year with up to 15 different assessments. Additional assessments cost $120 each. You can add your company branding and integrate with more than 15 popular ATS platforms.
• The Business plan at $26,400 per year gives access to 125 assessments and up to 12,500 candidates per year. Additional assessments cost $95 each. You can use the TestGorilla API to integrate the system with your company’s applications.

You can also contact TestGorilla for custom enterprise pricing if you have even greater needs.

Ducknowl’s pricing

Ducknowl doesn’t disclose its pricing. You must contact the company for a quote based on your requirements. The price paid will depend on the specific types of screening and assessments you use.

Pricing: Comparison chart at a glance

TestGorilla		Ducknowl
Plan	Price (billed annually)	Plan	Price
Free	$0	All pricing by request only
Pay as you go	$26 per month
Scale	$325 per month
Business	$2,200 per month

TestGorilla vs. Ducknowl: Ease of use

Both candidates and hiring teams benefit from a user-friendly assessment experience. A platform that is easy to use supports applicants in completing their tests while also enabling your hiring team to access and interpret the results.

To ensure the effectiveness of pre-employment assessments, it’s essential that your chosen platform provides clear instructions, a clean design, and simple navigation.

TestGorilla’s ease of use

TestGorilla’s user-friendly platform is designed to meet the needs of both hiring teams and candidates. The process of creating an assessment is easy, thanks to auto-suggested tests based on the job title and the ability to quickly generate custom questions.

You can easily invite candidates in bulk, and tests can be completed from any device without creating an account. Additionally, you can communicate with candidates through TestGorilla’s platform to keep them informed throughout the hiring process. 

Ducknowl’s ease of use

Ducknowl states that it makes pre-employment testing easier because recruiters can use resume screening, skills assessment, and video interviewing through one site. 

The user interface is relatively easy for applicants to use, with big green buttons guiding them to navigate from page to page.

Conclusion: TestGorilla vs. Ducknowl 

For businesses of any size, TestGorilla stands head and shoulders above Ducknowl in terms of features and simplicity. 

TestGorilla offers a free-forever plan, transparent pricing, and a larger set of tests for applicants. It’s more customizable than Ducknowl, offering better modes of support and more detailed reports on candidates. 

TestGorilla has much better anti-cheating measures, more ways to contact customer support, and performs extensive quality control on its tests to continually ensure the most accurate testing.

Overall, TestGorilla is a much better applicant prescreening service than Ducknowl on just about every metric. It’s easy to recommend TestGorilla over Ducknowl for any business looking to improve its hiring process.

Streamline your hiring process with pre-employment testing 

Skills-based hiring and pre-employment testing have numerous benefits, including being more accurate predictors of job success than traditional resumes. By using these methods, you can save time and resources during the hiring process. 

Relying on quantitative and data-backed tests, pre-employment software reduces the human bias that can interfere with hiring, helping your company to hire the right person every time.

TestGorilla offers the best pre-employment screening software for companies of all sizes, from startups to enterprises. Book a free 30-minute live demo today to start taking advantage of the benefits of TestGorilla.