15 best pre-employment assessment tools for contact centers

• Pre-employment assessments measure job-relevant ability and fit before you make an offer.
• For contact centers, the best tools combine behavioral fit, cognitive ability, language, and job simulations.
• Well-built, job-related assessments predict performance far better than resumes or unstructured interviews.
• The right tool depends on your hiring volume, the roles, and whether you need assessment built into your ATS.

Contact centers live or die by who they hire, and a resume tells you almost nothing about whether a candidate can stay calm on a hard call or last 90 days. Pre-employment assessments do. The tools below help contact centers measure real ability and fit before the offer, at the volume BPO hiring demands. Here are fifteen worth knowing, and how to choose between them.

The 15 tools at a glance

1. Journeyfront
2. Harver
3. HireVue
4. SHL
5. Criteria
6. Aon’s Assessment Solutions
7. Mercer Mettl
8. Wonderlic
9. eSkill
10. Vervoe
11. The Predictive Index
12. Hogan Assessments
13. Thomas
14. iMocha
15. TestGorilla

What is a pre-employment assessment tool?

A pre-employment assessment tool is software that gives candidates standardized, job-related tests before hiring, then scores them against a consistent standard.

Instead of inferring fit from a conversation, it measures traits, skills, and abilities linked to success in the role. For contact centers, that consistency is what turns high-volume call center talent acquisition from guesswork into a repeatable process.

Why contact centers use assessment tools

• Faster high-volume hiring: automated scoring ranks large candidate pools in minutes.
• Better quality of hire: assessments surface agents who can actually do the work.
• Lower early attrition: hiring for fit reduces the wrong-fit hires that drive first-90-day churn.
• Consistency and fairness: every candidate meets the same job-related standard.
• Language and skills fit: critical for multilingual, multi-client contact center work.

What to look for

• Fit for high-volume and contact center roles specifically
• Validated, job-related assessments with low adverse impact
• Behavioral, cognitive, language, and job-simulation options
• Automation and ATS integration for volume
• Fairness monitoring and a clear candidate experience

The 15 best pre-employment assessment tools for contact centers

Here are the 15 best pre-employment assessment tools for contact centers, with what each measures, where it fits high-volume agent hiring, and how to tell them apart.

1. Journeyfront

Best for: BPO-specific assessment and predictive hiring. Journeyfront is the one tool here built specifically for BPO and contact center hiring. It combines an applicant tracking system with predictive behavioral assessments and job simulations, scoring the traits that predict whether an agent will perform and stay, across every client and geography. Journeyfront reports that BPOs using the platform reduce new-hire turnover by 29% and improve hiring efficiency by 71%, with more than 50 BPOs running over 100,000 agent hires a year on it.

• Predictive behavioral assessments and job simulations
• Automated screening, ranking, plus skills and language testing
• Client-specific hiring profiles and quality-of-hire analytics

Learn more at journeyfront.com/bpo.

2. Harver

Best for: predictive assessments at hiring volume. Harver pairs scientifically validated assessments with automation and explicitly serves BPOs and contact centers. It is a strong fit for validated pre-hire testing layered onto a high-volume funnel.

• Cognitive, personality, and situational-judgment assessments
• Automation that progresses qualified candidates
• Recruitment analytics dashboards

3. HireVue

Best for: assessments plus video interviewing at scale. HireVue combines skills assessments, game-based evaluations, and AI-scored video interviews across hourly and enterprise hiring. It suits contact centers that lean on structured, asynchronous interviewing.

• Skills validation and virtual job tryouts
• AI-scored video interviews with self-scheduling
• Workflow automation and talent matching

4. SHL

Best for: science-backed enterprise and volume assessment. SHL is a long-established talent assessment provider built on people science, with a deep portfolio spanning cognitive, personality, and situational-judgment tests. It fits large enterprises and high-volume hiring that want rigorous measurement.

• Broad assessment portfolio (cognitive, personality, behavioral)
• Situational judgment tests and skills simulations
• Science-backed dashboards for objective decisions

5. Criteria

Best for: validated pre-employment testing. Criteria offers scientifically validated assessments across aptitude, personality, and emotional intelligence, plus predictive video interviewing. It is a solid assessment layer for teams that already have an ATS.

• Aptitude, personality, and emotional-intelligence tests
• Game-based and skills assessments
• Asynchronous and real-time video interviewing

6. Aon’s Assessment Solutions

Best for: psychometric assessment with broad ATS integration. Aon provides robust psychometric talent assessments that integrate with 80-plus applicant tracking systems. A fit for enterprises that want validated selection wired into an existing stack.

• Psychometric assessments measuring skills, potential, and behavior
• Pre-hire capability across many role types
• Integration with 80-plus ATS platforms

7. Mercer Mettl

Best for: online assessments with proctoring. Mercer Mettl offers a broad library of psychometric, aptitude, and technical assessments through an online testing platform with AI-based remote proctoring. A fit for distributed, remote hiring at scale.

• Cognitive, behavioral, and technical assessments
• Online exam platform with remote proctoring
• Campus and lateral hiring solutions

8. Wonderlic

Best for: cognitive ability and job-fit prediction. Wonderlic is a long-standing provider that pairs cognitive ability with personality and motivation to predict on-the-job performance, and extends into development and retention.

• Job-specific hiring assessments (Wonderlic Select)
• Cognitive, personality, and motivation measures
• Development and team-dynamics tools

9. eSkill

Best for: role-specific skills and behavioral tests. eSkill offers a large library of hard-skills, cognitive, and behavioral tests, with call centers among its named industry solutions and tests for roles like call taker. A fit for granular, role-specific screening.

• Extensive test library across hundreds of subjects
• Combined hard-skill, cognitive, and behavioral profiles
• Anti-cheat authentication and proctoring

10. Vervoe

Best for: skills assessments and job simulations. Vervoe focuses on skills-based assessment and realistic job simulations, with AI grading and candidate ranking. A fit for hiring on demonstrated ability rather than credentials.

• Skills assessments with realistic job simulations
• AI-powered grading and ranking
• Conversational screening for high volume

11. The Predictive Index

Best for: behavioral and cognitive fit. The Predictive Index pairs a short behavioral assessment with a cognitive assessment to show how a candidate’s drives and problem-solving align with a role, which helps match agents to the demands of phone work. A fit for teams that want validated behavioral data inside their hiring decisions.

• Behavioral and cognitive assessments
• Role targets for validated fit scoring
• Team and management insights after hire

12. Hogan Assessments

Best for: personality-based selection. Hogan Assessments is a science-backed personality provider whose talent-acquisition assessments predict job performance and derailment risk, with versions tailored to 16 industries. A fit for enterprises that want deep personality measurement in high-stakes selection.

• Personality-based performance prediction
• Measures of bright-side, dark-side, and inside traits
• Industry-specific selection solutions

13. Thomas

Best for: behavioral and aptitude profiling. Thomas offers behavioral, aptitude, personality, and emotional-intelligence assessments through its people-effectiveness platform, linking candidate insight to how managers coach after hire. A fit for teams that want selection and development in one view.

• Behavioral, aptitude, and personality assessments
• Profiles of how people think and communicate
• Manager guides for onboarding and coaching

14. iMocha

Best for: skills and communication testing. iMocha is a skills-intelligence platform with a large library of cognitive, language, communication, and role-specific tests, plus AI interviews and proctoring. A fit for contact centers that need to validate communication and language skills at enterprise scale.

• Large skills and communication assessment library
• Cognitive, language, and role-specific tests
• AI interviews and proctoring

15. TestGorilla

Best for: skills-based screening. TestGorilla is an AI recruiting platform built around a skills-test library, job simulations, and AI interviews that verify whether candidates can do the job rather than inferring it from a resume. A fit for high-volume teams that want ability-based screening with sourcing attached.

• Skills-test library and job simulations
• AI interviews to automate screening
• Candidate sourcing with match reasoning

Quick comparison

How to choose the right tool

Match the tool to how your contact center actually hires. If you fill large classes across clients, prioritize automation, ATS integration, and a purpose-built fit for volume.

If language and role-specific skills are critical, weight tools with strong language and skills libraries. And if early attrition is your pain, favor tools that combine behavioral fit with job simulations, since those best predict who will stay. Whatever you choose, the goal is the same: hire for fit so you can reduce agent attrition before it starts. For a broader view of the systems behind these tools, see the roundup of predictive hiring and ATS platforms.