TestGorilla vs. Plum

Pre-employment testing provides a dependable measure of an applicant’s potential success in a specific role. It does so by measuring objective skills while avoiding the influence of unconscious bias. 

It also streamlines the hiring process by eliminating the need to manually review tens – even hundreds – of ambiguous and subjective resumes. 

Given the large range of pre-employment testing platforms available, selecting the right one for your business can be challenging. 

This article compares the features of two providers, TestGorilla and Plum, to help you make the best choice.

How does TestGorilla work?

TestGorilla provides valuable insights and analysis that identify the best candidates among your pool to decrease the risk of mis-hires. 

Our pre-employment screening platform saves you valuable time and resources by eliminating tedious resume reviews and providing objective, actionable results. These help you hire the right person every time. 

TestGorilla’s library includes 400+ tests to evaluate candidates’ personality types, cognitive abilities, programming and software skills, situational judgment, culture add, language skills, and other role-specific skills. You can zero in on a specific skill with a single test or combine up to five tests into a custom assessment to gain comprehensive insights into your candidates. You can even customize each test question to match your specific hiring needs. 

Once done, send your assessment to all candidates with just a few clicks. Candidates can complete TestGorilla’s assessments from any internet-connected device, with access to dependable support throughout the process.

All our tests are scientifically validated and undergo a 28-step quality-control process before release. Finally, our stringent anti-cheating measures safeguard the integrity of the test results, so you’re hiring only candidates with proven abilities. 

How does Plum work?

Plum aims to simplify talent management with its 25-minute Plum Discovery Survey. This psychometric assessment dives into different aspects of a person's personality, problem-solving skills, and social intelligence. 

It's broken down into four sections and doesn't have a strict time limit, though most people finish it in about 25 minutes. The results create a detailed Plum Profile, which helps with job matching and spotting leadership potential within a company. 

To get started, customers complete an eight-minute automated job analysis. This will help pinpoint the behavioral requirements for any role and make it simple to update them as things change. Candidates then complete an assessment to measure their personality, behavior, and soft skills.  Finally, Plum’s reporting and results let organizations see how well someone fits a job by comparing their profile to the behavioral needs of the job.

TestGorilla vs. Plum: Test libraries

A pre-employment testing library should be comprehensive enough to cover a range of roles and specific hard and soft skills, enabling you to evaluate candidates with precision. 

The platform must also review its tests regularly to optimize each question for identifying the best candidates. 

TestGorilla’s test library

TestGorilla’s library features 400+, all of which are completely customizable to meet the specific requirements of each role. Tests cover candidates’:

• Cognitive ability

• Programming and software skills

• Culture add

• Language skills

• Personality traits

• Situational judgment

• Role-related skills, such as coding challenges for developer roles

You can choose from various answer formats, including multiple-choice, essay response, file upload, and video response. 

International recruitment is also possible with TestGorilla, thanks to localized websites in 12 languages. 

Explore advanced skills testing with TestGorilla

See how TestGorilla leads the way in skills assessments. Sign up for our free live demo and discover a better way to evaluate candidates.

Plum’s test library

Plum offers a single assessment that measures 10 predetermined patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior. These patterns include embracing diversity, teamwork, innovation, adaptation, communication, and more. The assessment is based on the "Big Five" personality model, a well-known and researched framework for understanding personality traits. Plum’s version of this popular assessment also focuses on problem-solving skills and social intelligence, which it defines as the ability to interpret and use social cues. 

However, Plum doesn’t offer job-specific tests that cover programming skills, software skills, language skills, or competencies related to a particular role. There’s also no option to customize test questions to match business needs. 

Test libraries: Comparison chart at a glance

TestGorilla vs. Plum: Functionalities for hiring developers

Hiring developers is a unique process. It’s critical to evaluate applicants’ practical coding and software development capabilities, as well as soft skills like customer service. 

Look for pre-employment tests that measure coding aptitude, debugging proficiency, and mobile development framework skills. Pair these with personality tests to paint a more complete picture of the candidate and see how they’ll fit into your development team. 

Hiring developers with TestGorilla

TestGorilla is an ideal assessment platform for hiring developers. We offer a variety of software skill tests, including:

• Coding languages

• Web and mobile development frameworks

• Algorithmic-thinking challenges

• Debugging challenges

• Arrays proficiency

You can customize coding challenges to mimic real-life issues the candidate would face in your team. To keep our platform up to speed on evolving developer roles, we’ve rolled out a set of coding challenges to test candidates' skills with heaps, binary search trees, and hash tables. Plus, you can now assess their Android development abilities using our Kotlin test.

For a holistic view of each developer candidate, complement these tests with personality and customer service tests to assess the candidate’s communication skills.

TestGorilla can also assess the candidate’s familiarity with development frameworks – such as Django, React, and Angular – and other tools, such as CSS, Bash, and Git.  In addition, we let each developer candidate tweak their testing environment to their needs. Whether it’s our integrated development environment (which lets them customize features such as window and font size) or our language-agnostic coding test (which lets them choose from up to 20 different coding languages), we make sure they can work comfortably and effectively.

With all of that customization happening, our coding timeline feature ensures your hiring team has a play-by-play of each action a candidate takes during the assessment. Finally, if none of these developer assessment tools feel like a good fit, TestGorilla lets you customize your own coding challenges and questions to keep them relevant to your particular role. 

Hiring developers with Plum

Plum focuses on assessing personality and behavioral traits, so the platform doesn’t include coding or developer skills tests to measure capability in these specialized roles. 

Functionalities for hiring developers: Comparison chart at a glance

TestGorilla vs. Plum: Video interviews

Video interviews streamline your hiring process by removing the bulk of the logistics of scheduling in-person interviews. 

One-way interviews in particular save time by enabling the candidate to record their responses at a time that suits them, with no need to consider time zone differences in international hiring campaigns. 

TestGorilla’s video interviews

TestGorilla offers one-way video interviews with customizable options, such as setting a maximum response time of 30, 60, or 120 seconds. You and your hiring team can also add comments to each interview, making it easy to rank candidates and share results with your team. 

Additionally, TestGorilla allows you to record candidates’ screens during certain tests, including coding challenges. You can then play back the recordings later on any device at your preferred speed, giving detailed insights into the candidate’s approach to problem-solving and time management.

To keep candidates’ on track, TestGorilla has a set response limit of three attempts per question.

Plum’s video interviews

Plum does not offer video interviews on its platform. 

Video interviews: Comparison chart at a glance

TestGorilla vs. Plum: Candidate experience and company branding

A candidate’s first impression of your organization is crucial, so you need to curate a professional, user-friendly experience. 

Including your company branding maintains a consistent image for the candidate, while a mobile-friendly platform is valuable to on-the-go applicants.

A platform that’s simple to use and offers applicants dedicated support as needed will contribute to a positive candidate experience. 

The candidate experience with TestGorilla

TestGorilla’s pre-employment tests are each designed to take less than 15 minutes, and candidates don’t need to create an account to complete them. These measures eliminate fuss and help ensure a high completion rate.

However, candidates taking assessments in English are redirected upon completion to make an account so they can review their results. 

A solid candidate experience also means being transparent with your candidates. That’s why TestGorilla lets you send regular updates to candidates about their progress during the testing process. 

If they’re ever confused about how the platform works or want to prepare for a test, our online candidate guides are regularly updated with in-depth insights into the testing process. Candidates can even try out a practice question before jumping into an assessment. If they’re still missing something, candidate support is available 24/7 via live chat. 

Lastly, TestGorilla provides ample branding options, including customized intro or outro videos and the ability to use your company colors and logo on all candidate communications.

The candidate experience with Plum

To keep candidates up to speed on the assessment process, Plum offers an in-depth candidate support page with answers to FAQs related to technical issues, assessment parameters, and disability accommodations. 

Regarding employer branding, Plum creates a profile for every candidate that completes its assessment, but this carries Plum’s branding only. The platform’s website doesn’t mention customization options to add the customer’s branding to candidate communications.

Plum’s assessment takes an average of 25 minutes to complete. However, there’s no option to set a time limit or record how long each candidate takes to complete the assessment.

Candidate experience and company branding: Comparison chart at a glance

TestGorilla vs. Plum: Enterprise and startup friendliness

The right pre-employment testing platform will support your business needs whether you’re hiring for a large enterprise or a startup. 

Startups may not hire constantly and need to be able to ramp support up and down accordingly. Meanwhile, enterprise businesses need solutions that integrate with other systems to avoid duplicate or unnecessary work.

Prioritize a platform that scales to support evolving recruitment needs, with features like ATS integration, candidate progress tracking, GDPR compliance, and API access. 

TestGorilla’s enterprise and startup friendliness

TestGorilla’s happy customers range from small startups to scaling businesses to global enterprises. 

Startups can take advantage of our affordable, flexible pricing options, which can scale up and down with hiring demand. We’re also fully GDPR-compliant, so keeping candidate data secure is one less worry.

We also cater to enterprise businesses with features such as multi-user rights management and bulk actions like calendar invitations. They can also use our ATS integrations and API access for high-volume hiring. In addition, we make it easy to manage user permissions and role-based rights. You can share public links via email or job postings and keep an eye on which ones bring in the best candidates. For companies looking to grow, try our job board to boost visibility around your remote roles. You can also take advantage of our skills-based hiring templates to kick off your hiring campaign. And the cherry on top? Our free plan lets you dive into our testing library with zero commitment. 

Plum’s enterprise and startup friendliness

Businesses of all sizes can use Plum’s sole pre-employment assessment, but it doesn’t scale or offer features for different customer types. PlumThrive is the enterprise solution, described as a "Talent-Driven Platform," that offers comprehensive workforce analytics. It helps businesses quantify job fit, improve the quality of hires, identify potential, and provide personalized career insights.  However, it’s unclear whether Plum’s assessment integrates with ATS software or offers API access. 

Enterprise and startup friendliness: Comparison chart at a glance

TestGorilla vs. Plum: Quality control

You need to know that your pre-employment test results are fair and valid to rely on them in your hiring decisions.

Quality control for pre-employment assessments might include careful scientific development, pre-publishing reviews by multiple parties, regular question updates, and integration of customer feedback. 

TestGorilla’s quality-control processes'

TestGorilla views quality control as an ongoing and vital process. That’s why we employ a robust 28-step quality-control process for all tests before they launch. 

This process involves collaboration with:

• Subject-matter experts

• Peer reviewers

• Sample testers 

• Psychometricians 

While our proprietary algorithms continuously improve the content on each test, we also regularly solicit feedback from customers and candidates to make tests even more effective. Additionally, we retire questions after a set time to prevent overexposure or web leaks. 

Plum’s quality-control processes

There’s little information available on Plum’s website regarding quality-control processes. Plum’s assessment uses psychometric test theory to measure behavior and personality traits, so every candidate takes the same assessment. But, as a result, customers have no options to adjust or customize the assessment.   It’s also unclear how often the platform reviews its assessment, updates the questions, or incorporates feedback from users and customers.

Quality control: Comparison chart at a glance

TestGorilla vs. Plum: Anti-cheating measures

Test scores are only useful when you can ensure that the results are fair. Effective anti-cheating measures ensure security and integrity for each test. 

Some of the most common features that help prevent cheating include disabling copy-paste functionality, screen monitoring, and question randomization. 

TestGorilla’s anti-cheating measures

TestGorilla offers a comprehensive range of anti-cheating measures. These include:

• Randomizing question order and retiring questions to avoid leaks

• Candidate webcam screenshots every 30 seconds during assessments (with permission)

• IP-address monitoring to detect access attempts from multiple locations

• Full-screen mode to detect if a candidate opens a new window

We also establish test deadlines to prevent candidates from taking time to research answers. As an added precaution, employers are unable to view questions and answers. These measures maintain the integrity of our test results and prevent candidates from seeking an unfair advantage.

Plum’s anti-cheating measures

Plum’s assessments require applicants to choose statements that are most or least like them to measure their behavior and personality traits – not job-specific skills. Because of this, Plum states there’s no incentive to cheat.

There is no mention on Plum’s website of common anti-cheating measures like question cycling or IP-address monitoring. The assessment also has no time limit. 

Anti-cheating measures: Comparison chart at a glance

TestGorilla vs. Plum: Reporting and analytics

Detailed analysis of candidate responses and testing behaviors is crucial to enable you to gauge their potential performance accurately. 

Your pre-employment assessment reports should be easy to understand and make it simple to compare and rank candidates.

Solid reporting and analytics also reduce the risk of unconscious bias by instead relying on measurable skills to rank results. 

TestGorilla’s reporting and analytics features

TestGorilla provides a variety of easy-to-understand reports to evaluate and compare candidate results. A helpful overview of results shows how candidates rank against a scoring benchmark. We also understand that not every test holds the same weight for a particular role. That’s why our weighted scoring feature lets you determine how much each test counts towards a candidate’s final score. 

Individual reports are also available for each candidate, enabling you to drill down into their overall performance and responses. They are customizable, so you can add your own comments and ratings to communicate with your team about your candidate pool. 

Finally, you can share reports with your hiring team quickly and easily in PDF, XLSX, and CSV formats. Our Candidate PDF reports, for example, dig into candidates’ strengths and weaknesses, giving your hiring team a complete picture of a candidate’s potential. 

Plum’s reporting and analytics features

Plum creates a profile report identifying each candidate’s top talents, such as adaptation or innovation. It also reveals the candidate’s work style and work preferences, such as favoring leadership roles. 

You can compare the assessment results to the criteria set by the automated job analysis. However, the results consider only the behavior and personality traits measured by the assessment, so you won’t get a complete view of a candidate’s skills. Also, it’s unclear where you can share reports with your team or customize them.

Reporting and analytics: Comparison chart at a glance

TestGorilla vs. Plum: Customer support

Quality customer support is a must for pre-employment testing platforms. 

Support should assist recruiters in troubleshooting any problems and ensure candidates have a smooth, stress-free testing experience.

Most platforms offer a combination of live chat, email, and phone support.

TestGorilla’s customer support

TestGorilla provides dedicated customer support through live chat and email. 

For new customers, we also provide a training and onboarding tour to explain how to use all the platform’s features. There’s also a wide range of blog articles on topics like skills-based hiring techniques and pre-employment testing uses. 

Plus, TestGorilla offers an extensive online help center with a range of how-to guides for both customers and candidates. 

Plum’s customer support

Plum provides an online knowledge base with troubleshooting articles and guides for using the assessment. 

Users can email Plum via an online form, but there’s no live chat available.  

Customer support: Comparison chart at a glance

TestGorilla vs. Plum: Pricing

While most pre-employment testing platforms price per user per month, some start from a flat rate per month or per year, while others use a pay-as-you-go model. Platforms with a range of pricing models offer more flexibility as your business evolves. 

If you’re new to pre-employment testing, some platforms even offer a free plan to help you get started. 

TestGorilla’s pricing

TestGorilla offers a straightforward pricing structure with no hidden costs. There are three pricing plans on offer:

• Free forever at $0: Full access to five free tests and five custom questions.

Depending on the size of your company, paid plans begin with:

• Starter from $75 USD per month: Grants full access to the test library, with unlimited concurrent assessments. 

• Pro from $115 USD per month: Includes everything from the Starter plan, plus video questions, ATS integrations, API access, custom branding, custom tests, and coding challenges. 

We set our pricing based on your company's number of full-time equivalent (FTE) employees. For instance, two part-time employees working 20 hours a week each count as one FTE. 

We offer an annual subscription for smaller teams with 1-15 FTEs. Larger teams can choose our monthly plans, which adjust according to team size. Each plan includes unlimited candidate testing, unlimited account users, and access to our job board. 

Plus, if you have over 50 FTEs, you can enjoy a 15-day free trial.

Plum’s pricing

Plum does not share its pricing plans, so interested customers must contact the company directly for a quote.

The platform does offer a free demo before purchase. 

Pricing: Comparison chart at a glance

TestGorilla vs. Plum: Ease of use

The best pre-employment screening platform is easy to use for both candidates and recruiters alike. 

Features that improve user experience include a well-designed interface, intuitive navigation, and straightforward test creation tools. 

TestGorilla’s ease of use

TestGorilla’s pre-employment tests are efficient, each taking roughly 15 minutes to complete. This reduces the risk of candidates abandoning tests midway through. 

Candidates feel confident completing pre-employment tests through TestGorilla, thanks to the intuitive user interface available on any device. 

We’ve also added a test preview feature. You can search by skill or role, and we'll suggest the best tests to fit your needs. If you'd rather not build your own assessment, just pick one from our ready-made templates.

Additionally, our ATS integrations and bulk actions further help recruiters simplify their work. 

All in all, TestGorilla is easy to use anywhere without sacrificing the in-depth candidate data that guarantees a great hire.

Why TestGorilla excels in candidate screening

Find out what sets TestGorilla apart in hiring. Sign up for our free plan and access comprehensive tools for effective candidate screening.

Plum’s ease of use

Plum’s personality assessment is easy to use but requires account logins for customers and candidates to get started. If users encounter any issues, the support options are limited to email.

For more concrete info about usability, users should schedule a free demo. 

Final thoughts: TestGorilla vs. Plum

TestGorilla and Plum both offer behavior and personality tests to determine a candidate’s aptitude and potential. However, TestGorilla goes several steps further and includes job-specific skills tests, coding challenges, and substantial customization options. 

TestGorilla’s extensive test library and focus on quality control improve hiring results for candidates from all backgrounds and for all roles. Pricing is transparent and easily adjustable to meet your business needs. 

In contrast, Plum provides little detail on its quality-control processes and shares pricing information only by request. 

Overall, TestGorilla is the best platform to improve your hiring process with pre-employment screening.

Streamline your hiring process with pre-employment testing

As technology advances, resumes are becoming obsolete – they’re tedious to review and subject to bias and exaggeration. 

Pre-employment testing, on the other hand, offers a clear, bias-free picture of each candidate’s skills and aptitude. It’s key to making better hiring decisions faster.

TestGorilla offers an extensive test library and many customization options. We even have a free plan to help you get started. Explore how TestGorilla can improve your hiring process today with a free 45-minute live demo.