The basics of what you need to know to get started — in less than 5 minutes.
New platforms can be a bit overwhelming — it's hard to decide where to start. This is a good place. This article is designed a bit more as a checklist rather than a guide. It points you in the direction of the guides that help you accomplish each of these tasks. This article is for any new TestGorilla account user.
Approx. read time 4 minutes
In this article
Video explainer
The video below summarizes the important parts of our platform. The text below the video is a breakdown of most of what is included in the video.
Set up your account
TestGorillla home page
Upon registering for a Free plan, you can complete a checklist of additional onboarding tasks from the Home tab.
This may include:
- Completing your signup
- Watching our onboarding video
- Creating an assessment
- Inviting candidates
- Watch our demo assessment video
For both free and paid plans, you will gain access to a Statistics section in the Home tab upon creating your first assessment.
The Statistics section displays four metrics:
- Active assessments: The total number of active assessments in the account.
- Invited candidates: The total number of candidates invited through the account.
- Completed assessments: The total number of candidates who have completed an assessment in the account.
- Hired candidates: The total number of candidates marked as "hired" in the application.
In addition, the Home tab features a Discovery section, from which you can learn more about various features of the TestGorilla platform.
Create your team
The best way to start is by creating your team. Add as many users as you want and assign them different roles such as:
- Hiring manager
- Recruiter
- Admin
Add your brand
Available on the Pro plan
Adding your company logo and colors will give your assessments your company's look and feel, boosting brand awareness.
Create an assessment
Click the Create new assessment button to get started creating your first assessment. The assessment creation process has four steps. We'll pretend we're hiring a technical project manager for this guide.
Step 1. Role details
We'll name the assessment Tech Project Manager 1 and we'll choose the role Technical Project Manager. By doing this, the TestGorilla system will recommend tests that fit this role during step two.
Step 2. Select tests
Likely the most important step, this is where we add tests to the assessment. Looking at the recommendations, we see that the TestGorilla system suggests we add certain tests for a Technical Project Manager. Some of these include:
- Attention to detail
- Microsoft Excel
- Leadership & people management
- Business ethics & compliance
Research has taught us that multi-measure tests are the best predictors of job success, so we'll combine different kinds of tests into this one assessment. You can read more about this concept here.
Once you find the tests you want, click the Add button to add them to your assessment.
We recommend adding at least four tests to every assessment.
Step 3. Add your own custom questions
Custom questions help you to get to know your candidates better by enabling you to test actual work samples. Please note, that the types of custom questions available to you depend on your plan. You can choose from the following question types:
- Essay questions. To ask candidates to respond to an example of a customer email
- Multiple-choice questions. To test knowledge or get an opinion on a specific topic.
- Video questions. A great way to get to know a candidate, and can potentially replace the initial screening interview!
- File upload questions. Ask a candidate to upload a take-home assignment, CV, or portfolio.
- Coding questions. In case you want to add something different than what we offer in our own library.
Every custom question is also saved in your personal custom question library, so you can reuse them repeatedly without needing to make them twice.
Step 4. Finalize
Here you can see an overview of the tests and custom questions you've included, as well as the total duration of the assessment. You want your candidate to have a positive experience, so try to keep the assessment to about one hour or a bit longer if there is a coding question.
The advanced options you can include are:
- Qualifying questions. These help you filter out candidates before they even start the assessment, in case they don't meet your minimum requirements.
- Welcome video. A personal branded video helps to impress, engage, and motivate candidates.
- Anti-cheating measures. One of our measures is to take a snapshot of candidates every 30 seconds during the assessment process — with their awareness and permission, of course! — but you can turn this off if you'd like.
- Extra time for tests. Want to give all of your candidates some extra time? You can do that here!
- Accommodations for candidates with extra requirements. By default, TestGorilla allows candidates to receive accommodation for a concentration disability or language fluency issues. You can turn this option off, though we recommend seeking legal advice before doing so.
- Assessment deadlines. Do you need an assessment to remain open to candidates for only a certain amount of time? You can set an assessment deadline starting 24 hours into the future from the initial assessment creation time, which will automatically close upon the elapsed time.
- Show results to candidates. By default, showing results to candidates is enabled on all plans in English. If you are on a paid plan, you may choose to disable the automatic redirect of candidates to the TestGorilla Profile login page once they've completed their assessment.
Invite candidates
You can invite your candidates to your assessment through three means:
- Email. Invite them one at a time, or in bulk through a file upload — if your plan permits.
- Public link. Put a link to your assessment in your job post. This way, candidates can invite themselves to the assessment, cutting out the middleman and saving you time.
- ATS. If you’re using one of the applicant tracking systems we’re integrated with, you can connect it to TestGorilla, allowing you to make your process more seamless.
Analyze results
On the results page, your candidates will be ranked according to their average test scores. This allows you to quickly focus on your top candidates.
Candidate full results
When you click on a candidate's name you'll see their overall results, as well as a breakdown of scores on individual tests to help identify points where they might benefit from training.
Scoring method
To get a better idea of how candidates perform on a test, you can compare their scores against other groups of candidates by changing the scoring method.
Scoring methods include options in:
- Education
- Job role
- Job experience
Custom questions
When you look down on a candidate's results page, you'll see his or her answers to your custom questions. By clicking the icon in the View answer column, you'll be able to view the answer for each question, including video responses and file uploads.
You can rate each question and leave comments about your initial feelings.
Hiring stage
After reviewing the results, update the hiring stage of the candidate to help you keep track of everyone. Once you've made a hire, change the stage to Hired, so we can check in with you later to see how your new hire worked out.