Pre-Employment Testing Software for Small Business with Skills Tests from $49 a Month
Pre-employment testing software for a small business (sometimes called employee testing software) is a tool that writes a short skills or knowledge test for the job you are filling, sends it to applicants as a single link, and scores the answers so you only interview people who can do the work. For pre-employment testing at a small business, that means every applicant takes the same short test before anyone spends time on calls. Assessing.ai generates that test from your job posting in about a minute on the Plus plan, scores single and multiple choice answers the moment they are submitted, and keeps written and recorded answers next to the score for you to review. Plans start at $49 a month or $288 a year, with no per-candidate credits and no annual contract on monthly billing.
Paste the job title or the whole posting below. You will be looking at a draft test before you finish reading this page.
Write a pre-employment test for your open role
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What a small business needs from a pre-employment assessment tool
Most pre-employment assessment software is built for a recruiting department with a budget line and a procurement process. If you are the owner, the office manager, or the one person who does HR alongside three other jobs, the list of things that matter is shorter and different.
A test for the job you are actually filling
Describe the role in plain words, or paste the posting. The generator writes questions about that specific job: a bookkeeper gets bank reconciliation and QuickBooks questions, a dental front-desk hire gets insurance verification and scheduling scenarios, a route driver gets DOT hours and a customer complaint to handle. Edit or delete anything before you send it.
Instant scoring where it is objective
Single choice and multiple choice answers are scored as soon as the applicant submits, including partial credit on multiple choice. That covers most of a knowledge screen, so the ranking of a 60-person applicant pool is ready without you reading a single answer.
Written and recorded answers where judgment matters
Some roles cannot be screened with multiple choice. A support hire has to write a reply to an angry customer; a sales hire has to talk. Add a written question or a recorded video answer, and every response sits in the results view next to the choice score, where you add your own score in a couple of clicks. Assessing.ai does not auto-grade written or recorded answers and does not claim to.
Flat pricing that survives a busy month
Credit-based tools look cheap until one posting draws 200 applicants in a week. Our plans are priced on responses per month, not per hire, so a busy month never turns into an overage invoice, and you can afford to test everyone rather than only the resumes that looked good.
Time limits, shuffling and a clean audit trail
Set a time limit, randomize the question and answer order, and every completion is logged with name, email and a timestamp. If you ever need to show why one applicant advanced and another did not, the record is there and exports to CSV.
Nothing for the applicant to install
Applicants open a link on a phone or laptop, enter their name and email, and start. There is no candidate account, no browser extension and no proctoring download. Fewer people abandon the test, which matters most for hourly and high-volume roles.
How to test applicants before you interview them
Paste the job posting
Choose hiring as the use case, paste the title or the full posting, pick the question types and the difficulty.
Edit the draft
A draft test arrives in about a minute. Cut the questions that do not fit, add one about your own process, set the time limit.
Send one link
Put the link in your reply to applicants, in the job posting itself, or in your ATS auto-response. Applicants take it whenever they open it.
Shortlist from the scores
Scores land in the dashboard as people finish. Sort by score, read the written answers of your top eight, and book calls with three of them.
Pre-employment testing software pricing for small teams compared
Prices below were read on each vendor's own pricing page, or, where a vendor does not publish prices, taken from third-party contract data and labeled as such. Read the annual number: several vendors quote a monthly figure that is only sold on a yearly commitment.
| Tool | Entry paid plan | What you pay per year | How volume is charged | Best for |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Assessing.ai | $49 a month, or $288 a year | $588 monthly, $288 annual | 500 responses a month on Starter, no credits | A small business filling varied roles that wants a role-specific test in minutes at a flat price |
| TestGorilla | $142 a month, annual commitment only | $1,704 | 1 credit per candidate on Core, 2 seats, 5 custom questions | A team that wants the largest library of validated tests and a free 10-credit tier to try first |
| Testlify | $139 a month equivalent, billed as $1,668 a year | $1,668 | 100 credits a year, $21 per extra credit, credits expire at cycle end | Validated tests with a 30-day money-back guarantee and no sales call |
| ClassMarker Business | Professional 1 (400 credits a month), about $39.95 a month per SaaSworthy | About $479 per SaaSworthy listing | 1 credit per attempt, 10 per camera-monitored attempt | Certification programs that need proctoring, certificates and a payment wall |
| Criteria Corp | Quote only | $5,000 to $15,000 for small teams per Vendr contract data | Built around headcount and annual assessment volume | Employers who need CCAT-style normed cognitive tests with validity documentation |
| Vervoe | Quote only on vervoe.com; legacy $19 and $250 a month tiers still listed on Capterra | $1,300 to $17,000 per Vendr contract data | Capped candidates per plan, uncapped on Enterprise | Skills-first hiring at volume with AI-ranked simulations and ATS integration |
| Wonderlic Select | Quote only | $1,000 or more (SelectHub listing); $6,000 per user (Capterra listing) | Package priced on employee count, annual | Validated cognitive, motivation and personality screening for volume hiring |
Vendor pricing changes and ClassMarker shows local currency at checkout, so verify on each vendor's page before buying. We list where competitors beat us because you will find out anyway: Assessing.ai has no validated test library, no proctoring and no AI grading of open answers.
Roles small businesses screen with a pre-employment test
Bookkeepers and accounting clerks
Bank reconciliation, accounts payable coding, sales tax basics and QuickBooks navigation. Ten questions separate the people who have closed a month from the people who have watched a video about closing a month.
Medical and dental front desk
Insurance verification, appointment scheduling logic, HIPAA basics and a written reply to a patient who was double-billed. The written answer is the part that predicts how they will treat your patients.
Customer support and inside sales
Tone, escalation judgment, product comprehension and a recorded 60-second answer to a scripted objection. Listen to the top scorers only.
Warehouse, drivers and field technicians
Safety rules, basic math, reading a work order or a route sheet, and a scenario about a customer who is not home. Fast to build and it filters no-shows before you block out a morning of interviews.
Office administrators and executive assistants
Spreadsheet formulas, calendar and travel logic, written communication and a scenario about two managers who both need the same afternoon.
Skilled trades and shop roles
Code and safety knowledge, measurements and conversions, and a photo-free written description of how they would diagnose a specific fault. You learn more from that paragraph than from a resume.
Pre-employment testing software versus a validated test library
There are two different products sold under the same name. The first is a library of standardized, psychometrically validated tests: cognitive aptitude, personality, situational judgment, typing, Excel. TestGorilla, Criteria, Wonderlic and eSkill sell this. The tests come with norm groups and validation studies, and the price reflects the research behind them.
The second is a generator that writes a role-specific knowledge and skills test from the job you describe. That is what Assessing.ai is. There are no norm groups, because the test is unique to your role, and there is no validation study, because it was written this morning. What you get instead is a test that asks about your software, your customers and your process, ready in minutes, at a price that does not require a budget approval.
The honest rule: if you hire hundreds of people a year into the same standardized role and employment counsel wants documented validity evidence behind the screen, buy the library. If you hire nine people a year into nine different jobs, the library is mostly shelfware and the generator is the better tool. Many small businesses run both: a validated cognitive test from a library for the two roles where it matters, and a generated knowledge test for everything else.
Keeping a pre-employment test legal and defensible
Pre-employment tests are legal in the United States when they measure something the job actually requires and are applied the same way to every applicant. Title VII of the Civil Rights Act and the EEOC's Uniform Guidelines on Employee Selection Procedures are the framework: a test must be job-related and consistent with business necessity, and if it screens out a protected group at a higher rate, you need to be able to show why the skill it measures is essential.
For a small business the practical rules are short. Test skills and knowledge the posting lists, not general intelligence, unless you have a validated instrument for that. Give every applicant for the role the same test under the same conditions. Do not ask health or disability questions before a conditional offer, which the ADA prohibits. Keep the scoring rule written down before the first applicant takes it, and keep the results. A generated test that asks a bookkeeper applicant to reconcile a sample statement is about as job-related as a test can get, which is exactly why role-specific tests are easier to defend than generic ones.
This is a description of how the rules work, not legal advice. If a role is regulated or you are hiring at volume, have counsel look at the test once. It takes an hour and it is cheap insurance.
How much a busy hiring month costs on credits versus a flat plan
Run the numbers on a real month. One posting for a front-desk coordinator on a job board draws 140 applicants in ten days. On TestGorilla Core, each candidate you test uses a credit, and the plan is $1,704 a year whether you post one job or twelve. On Testlify Standard, 140 started assessments would exhaust the year's 100 credits in that one posting, with $21 for each extra credit on monthly billing, which is $840 on top of the subscription. On ClassMarker, 140 attempts is 140 credits from a 400-credit monthly allowance, fine for one posting, tight for three in the same month.
On Assessing.ai Starter, 140 responses is 140 of the 500 included that month, and the bill is $49. The point is not that credit pricing is wrong; it is priced for recruiters with predictable pipelines. A small business pipeline is not predictable, and a flat monthly plan is the pricing model that matches it.
For every vendor side by side, including the quote-only ones, see our pre-employment assessment software pricing comparison, which works out the cost per candidate at 300 applicants a year.
What to put in a pre-employment test for a small business role
Ten to fifteen questions, fifteen to twenty minutes, one or two written answers at the end. Past twenty minutes, applicants with other options simply stop, and you lose the good ones first.
Spend the multiple choice questions on the knowledge the person must arrive with: the software, the regulations, the arithmetic, the terminology. Spend the one written question on judgment: a realistic situation from your business with no clean answer, where the applicant has to explain what they would do and why. Put that written question last so that an applicant who runs out of patience has still given you scored multiple choice data. Resist testing everything. You are not certifying the person. You are deciding whether to spend forty-five minutes on a call with them.
Questions small employers ask before buying pre-employment testing software
What is pre employment testing?
Pre-employment testing is any structured evaluation an employer gives applicants before hiring them, to predict how they will perform in the job. In hiring software the term means skills, knowledge, cognitive and personality tests taken online. Drug and background screening are also called pre-employment testing but are a separate service; this page and this tool cover the skills and knowledge kind.
Is pre-employment testing legal?
Yes, when the test measures something the job requires and every applicant for the role takes it under the same conditions. Title VII and the EEOC Uniform Guidelines require tests to be job-related and consistent with business necessity, and the ADA bars medical questions before a conditional offer. A role-specific skills test is the easiest kind to defend, because the link between the questions and the job is obvious.
How much does pre-employment testing software cost?
Between $49 and about $150 a month for a small business, and $5,000 to $15,000 a year for quote-based enterprise vendors. Assessing.ai starts at $49 a month or $288 a year. TestGorilla's cheapest paid plan is $1,704 a year, Testlify's is $1,668 a year, and Criteria Corp contracts for small teams run $5,000 to $15,000 per Vendr's contract data.
What is the best pre-employment testing software for small business?
For a small business filling varied roles, the best tool is one that writes a role-specific test quickly and charges a flat monthly price with no per-candidate credits, which is what Assessing.ai does from $49 a month. If you need psychometrically validated cognitive or personality tests with norm data, TestGorilla or Criteria are better fits at a higher price.
Do you have to pay applicants for taking a pre-employment test?
Generally no. Under the Fair Labor Standards Act, applicants are not yet employees, so time spent on a pre-hire test is not hours worked. Two cautions: keep the test short and clearly part of selection rather than productive work you would otherwise pay for, and check your state's rules, since a few states treat lengthy assessments differently. This is a summary, not legal advice.
How do you assess job applicants before an interview?
Send every applicant for the role the same short online test as soon as they apply, before any phone call. Score the objective questions automatically, read the written answers from the top scorers only, and invite the best three to a call. It replaces the first-round screening call, which is the step that consumes most of a small team's hiring time.
What are the types of pre-employment tests?
Skills and knowledge tests (software, procedures, arithmetic, writing), cognitive aptitude tests, personality and behavioral assessments, situational judgment tests, work samples and simulations, and recorded video answers. Assessing.ai builds skills, knowledge, situational judgment and work-sample style tests with choice, written and recorded answers; validated cognitive and personality instruments come from library vendors.
How long should a pre-employment test be?
Fifteen to twenty minutes, which is ten to fifteen questions with at most two written answers. Applicant drop-off climbs sharply after twenty minutes and the people who leave first are the ones with other offers. Put the written questions last so early leavers still give you scored multiple choice data.
Test the next applicant pool before you book a single call
Paste the posting, edit the draft, send one link. Choice scores are sorted for you and every written answer is one click away.