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 removing the need to manually review tens – even hundreds – of ambiguous and subjective resumes. 

Given the large range of pre-employment testing platforms available, it can be challenging to select the right one for your business. 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 offers an array of personality, aptitude, and skills tests for your candidates. Combine these tests into custom assessments to gain comprehensive insights into your candidates. 

You can 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 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. Stringent anti-cheating measures safeguard the integrity of the test results. 

How does Plum work?

Plum focuses on behavioral assessments rather than job-specific skills.

Plum uses a single assessment to help employers make hiring decisions. It can be used during both the recruitment process and to manage growth opportunities for employees. The test model distinguishes 10 recurring patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior. 

Customers complete an automated job analysis to identify each role’s behavioral requirements. Candidates then complete an assessment to measure their personality, problem-solving skills, and social intelligence.

Plum compares individual candidate results against the job analysis to rank candidates against 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, enabling you to evaluate candidates with precision. 

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

TestGorilla’s test library

TestGorilla’s library features over 300 tests, all of which are completely customizable to meet the specific requirements of each role. Tests cover candidates’:

• Cognitive ability

• Language skills

• Personality traits

• Situational judgment

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

You can choose from a wide range of answer formats, including multiple-choice, essay response, file upload, and video response. 

International recruitment is also possible with TestGorilla, thanks to localized websites in 11 languages. 

Plum’s test library

Plum offers a single assessment that measures 10 predetermined patterns of thought, feeling, and behavior. 

Before an assessment, the platform conducts a job analysis to identify which behavior and personality traits are most valuable to success in the job.

Plum doesn’t offer job-specific skill tests or customized 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. 

Complement these 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, as well as other tools like CSS, Bash, and Git.  

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 like setting a maximum response time. You and your hiring team can add comments to each interview, making it easy to collaborate efficiently. 

TestGorilla also provides you the option to record candidates’ screens during certain tests, including coding challenges, which you can then play back later. This gives detailed insights into the candidate’s approach to problem-solving and time management.

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.

TestGorilla also provides ample branding options, including customized intro and outro videos, and adding your company colors and logo to all candidate communications.

The candidate experience with Plum

Plum creates a profile for every candidate that completes its assessment, but this carries Plum’s branding only. No mention is made of customization options to add the customer’s branding to candidate communications.

Plum’s assessment takes an average of 25 minutes to complete. There is no option to set a time limit or record how long each candidate takes to complete it. 

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 that can scale up and down with hiring demand. We’re fully GDPR-compliant too, so that’s one less worry for small businesses. 

We also cater to enterprise businesses, with features like multi-user rights management and bulk actions like calendar invitations. 

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. 

Plum’s assessment can integrate with ATS software. 

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 

We actively solicit customer and candidate feedback and use this to improve our test library. We also retire questions after a set time to prevent overexposure or web leaks. 

Plum’s quality-control processes

Plum’s assessment uses psychometric test theory to measure behavior and personality traits, so every candidate takes the same assessment. As a result, customers have no options to adjust or customize the assessment.  

It is unclear from Plum’s website how often the platform reviews its assessment or updates the questions. 

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

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.

Individual reports are also available for each candidate, enabling you to drill down into their overall performance and responses.

Share reports with your hiring team quickly and easily in PDF, XLSX, and CSV formats. 

Plum’s reporting and analytics features

Plum creates a profile report that identifies 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. 

Users can compare the assessment results to the criteria set by the automated job analysis. Results only consider the behavior and personality traits measured by the assessment.

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. 

Plum’s website doesn’t indicate the availability of support through chat, email, or phone. 

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 very clear and simple pricing structure, with no hidden costs.

There are three pricing plans on offer (billed annually or monthly):

• Free forever at $0: Full access to 10 free tests, including all personality tests.

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

• Starter from $75 USD per month ($900 per year paid upfront) - start with skills-based hiring for all roles. There is also the option to pay monthly, starting from $85 USD per month.

• Pro from $115 USD per month ($1,380 per year paid upfront) - maximize your hiring with advanced features. There is also the option to pay monthly, starting from $130 USD per month.

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 no longer than 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. 

ATS integrations and bulk actions also help recruiters simplify their work. 

Plum’s ease of use

Plum offers a straightforward user experience, in part due to its limited offering. 

Conclusion: 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 evidently 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 – as well as being tedious to review, they’re 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 30-minute live demo.