TestGorilla is a talent discovery platform driving the future of work through skills-based hiring. It offers a library of 400+ scientifically validated skills tests, enabling companies to hire faster, better and without bias. Candidates use TestGorilla to showcase their skills and potential, helping them secure the right roles. Founded in 2019, the company serves over 10,000 customers and millions of candidates worldwide. Wouter Durville, Co-founder and CEO of TestGorilla, talks about the hiring challenges which SMEs face and how skills testing can address these challenges.
Tell me about TG and the service it offers.
TestGorilla is a talent discovery platform that matches roles and talent using skills-based hiring. Our library of scientifically validated, skills-based tests offer a scalable way for companies to hire faster, better and without bias – our customers can assess unlimited candidates for job-relevant skills and use the results to make data-driven hiring decisions. Meanwhile, candidates can use TestGorilla to demonstrate their skills and potential beyond their resume. We’re currently rolling out a candidate profiles feature so that candidates can access their results independently.
What gap in the market did you see when setting it up?
It came from a personal experience. Around a decade ago, I started a social enterprise with my wife, and we were getting a crazy number of applications for a small business. There were up to 2,000 resumes for one job. We had piles of them on the table and no idea how to find the best talent, let alone make the process fair. Making things more objective and data-driven seemed to be the way to go so we began making our own little tests in Excel – literally handmade. We didn’t want to spend time on this, and we weren’t very good at it, but it still worked better than the resumes. I started looking for a solution that tested the skills and values we were looking for, but I couldn’t find one. I knew I couldn’t be the only one having this problem. And I was amazed that a solution didn’t exist. I saw an opportunity, and so in 2020, TestGorilla was born.
What challenges do SMEs face when hiring staff?
We survey thousands of employers every year to better understand this stuff – about 30% of those are under 250 FTE [full time equivalent]. In 2023, 51% told us they struggled to determine whether an applicant’s resume is accurate, and with the rise of AI-generated resumes, that’s certainly even harder now. We’re asking lots of questions about that for our annual report, which we’ll launch in the summer, so stay tuned for that,
We also looked into common challenges when hiring with skills-based hiring specifically. Last year, the most commonly cited challenge was difficulty evaluating assessments from a large number of candidates (41%), which signals a need for auto-scoring and benchmarking tools that streamline this process. These are things TestGorilla offers, and we’re improving these tools all the time. Twenty-six pecernt cited a lack of budget for new recruitment tools, which feels important for SMEs since they often have tight budgets. Also, 29% cited being unsure about which tests or assessments to use – which shows there’s more education to be done on how to choose job-relevant tests (we’re working on it!).
What best practices are involved when hiring staff?
The big thing we always come back to is this: measure for multiple job-relevant skills before you screen resumes. We’ve built our product around this philosophy – you can assess as many candidates as you like with TestGorilla at no extra cost, because we believe it’s so important to do it first. All a good resume really tells you is how good someone is at writing a resume, or maybe you see a company name you recognise and that introduces bias right away. Let people show you what they can do. The ones with the top skills might surprise you! Let the data guide your first screening decisions and take it from there.
The multi-measure aspect is very important too. You need to be measuring a range of job-relevant skills in the hiring process if you want those test results to be real indicators of potential and job success. There’s a lot of science behind why this is the case. We always recommend, for example, combining any kind of programming test with at least one cognitive ability test. You don’t want to hire for the coding skills alone; you need to see your candidates holistically to make the best hiring decisions.
How can a service like TG help SMEs when hiring?
SMEs often have fewer hands on deck to manage recruitment, and a tool like TestGorilla provides a serious amount of streamlining when you use it at the top of the funnel. It allows you to spend quality time with quality candidates, which is crucial when you’re short on time and resources for hiring. Also, when you test for specific skills, you know the people you’re hiring can do what you need them to do. There’s less chance of a mis-hire. Mis-hires are easier for bigger companies to absorb, but for SMEs, they can really hurt. Put simply, a tool like TestGorilla can help SMEs hire the right people, with less stress, and less bias too.
How important is the interview?
Interviews are so important. They help you gauge how your candidates communicate and how they think. That being said, interviewing is a skill in itself too, and not necessarily one that means you’ll be good on the job. So, while interviews are important, I think it’s even more important to conduct them fairly. Structured interviews are the golden standard. Ask all your candidates the same questions, standardise what a ‘good’ answer looks like and monitor your biases. Be friendly but wary – if you support the same football team, it’s not important.
Skills testing supports the interview process because it means you enter the interview more informed. If your candidates have taken a personality test, for example, you might know a bit about their levels of extraversion. If they fell short in a certain skill category, you could ask a question related to that skill to build a better picture. Essentially, like I mentioned before, it’s about getting a more holistic understanding of your candidate. The better the understanding, the better the interview.
