From automating initial candidate interviews to conducting online skills or personality testing, these tools help recruiters look beyond the CV to find the best candidates for every job.
In today’s competitive world of work, recruiters and hiring managers want to be sure that every decision is the right decision. As competition between companies for the very best talent has increased and as more candidates apply for fewer roles, just filling a role is no longer an option. Reviewing CVs and assessing candidates is time-consuming and costly, and recruiters need to be confident that they are delivering value to their clients in both costs and the quality of candidates.
That’s why recruiters and employers alike are seeking ways to take the guesswork out of the process in identifying talent who will be the best fit for the team, work most productively and stay in the role longer.
In this guide, Sapia explores the types of tools available, the insights they can provide and how they can benefit your business. We’ll also provide some guidelines for helping you to assess which tools could deliver the best return on your investment.
Talent assessment tools have been developed to help make that process easier, faster and more cost-effective. The tools leverage technology to more accurately identify the best talent for a role and predict their fit and performance in that organisation.
The benefits of candidate evaluation software can include:
The wide range of available talent assessment tools can be generally grouped into three areas of assessment: Work behaviours; Knowledge, skills and experience; Innate abilities and attributes.
Some tools may focus on a single attribute such as coding abilities or English competency while others can combine a range of tests and interview capabilities within one platform.
Once the requirements of a role are understood, the right tools can be chosen to assess those competencies.
1. Learnt knowledge, skills and experience assessments look at candidates’ specific job knowledge, qualifications and work experience. Assessed against the agreed capabilities required for the role, these assessments can be an extremely accurate and effective predictor of a candidate’s performance in the role. Some tools may focus on specific sectors and roles – eg sales, HR, health, hospitality, programming, engineering – while other platforms will cover a range of these with tests that can be customised to specific requirements
Some examples:
2. Innate abilities and attributes assessments focus on traits that are not job-specific such as personality, interests and cognitive abilities including problem-solving, logic skills, reading comprehension and learning ability. These universal human traits have proven to be effective indicators of job performance and cultural fit. Softskill testing: Tools can be used for talent evaluation across a range of qualities and personality traits such as teamwork, sales ability, good judgement, integrity, curiosity, impact, ownership and independence.
Some examples:
Saving time and money, filling roles with better quality candidates. That’s the key reason talent assessment tools are indispensable across the recruitment industry and in every employment sector. But with the plethora of tools available, how do you decide which ones are right for your organisation? Which talent assessment tools will best contribute to your success?
Before you invest, Sapia’s talent assessment tool checklist can help:
1) What do you need to know?
As an experienced recruiter, you can probably already recognise where your talent assessments sometimes fall short or you think they could be better. The data insight that can support your recruitment and hiring processes will be different for everyone and will vary according to:
When you know what you need to measure, you can start narrowing your search to identify the tools that can give you what you’re looking for.
2) How will the findings be presented?
Consider the format and depth of the feedback that different tools can provide. Is a numerical ranking of candidates sufficient or will in-depth analysis, comparisons and recommendations better serve your needs?
3) Do assessments support the hiring organisation’s brand values and strategy?
Consider whether the tools positively support an organisation’s employment policies and practices such as workplace diversity and inclusion, language or numeric competencies and minimum skills requirements.
4) Do tools remove bias from talent assessment?
Removing unconscious bias from the talent assessment process is a priority for organisations looking to improve workplace diversity and inclusion. While a text-based chat platform (such as Sapia) can effectively take bias out of the equation, video submissions bring the opportunity for bias front and centre of the process.
5) Do the tools support the interview process?
Few, if any, hiring decisions should ever be made solely on the basis of talent assessment tools rankings or findings. Make sure tools can provide meaningful data that will enhance the interview process. Many tools will help identify areas that should be explored further in the interview process and even suggest questions to help shape the interview.
6) How will the tool integrate with existing systems?
The best tools will integrate with your existing systems and processes and with other tools. You want to be sure that you can combine data from different tools to create meaningful reports and records. Tools that integrate with your existing ATS (Applicant Tracking System) are likely to deliver the best savings in time and effort.
7) What will candidates think?
Every candidate deserves a fair and positive experience, whether they are successful or not. Choose tools that are easy and engaging to use, appropriate for the role and tools that will enhance, not undermine, your employer brand.
The best tools also deliver value by allowing candidates to provide feedback on their engagement with tools after the assessment process.
https://sapia.ai/blog/predictivehire-is-named-candidate-experience-solution-of-the-year/
8) How do I find out what tools are best?
Ask your industry colleagues for recommendations and search the web for reviews and guides like this one that can help you navigate a very crowded market. When you think you’ve found the tools that will work best for you, your clients and your candidates, ask vendors to show you how their assessment tools can deliver with a personal demonstration or even a free trial.
9) Have you analysed the costs?
You want to be sure that your investment will pay its way. Take the time to consider the value of the candidate feedback or assessment of different tools will provide. Many vendors provide online calculators to help you estimate the return on your investment.
10) Do the tools support best practice?
Talent assessment tools can provide objective, measurable insights that other more traditional recruitment methods can’t provide. But technology has its limits too. Make sure that a positive candidate experience remains a priority – nobody wants to feel discriminated against or feel embarrassed or violated by intrusive personality testing.
Make sure also that in focusing on one key skill or trait, you’re not missing a candidate’s true strengths. In short, don’t use your talent assessment tools as the recruitment tool, use them in conjunction with all the other methods, tools and skills in your recruitment toolbox.
Leveraging objective data to augment decisions like who to hire and who to promote is critical if you are looking to minimise unconscious preferences and biases, which can surface even when those responsible have the best of intentions.
The greatest algorithm on earth is the one inside of our skull, but it is heavily biased. Human decision making is the ultimate black box.
Only with data, the right data alongside human judgment can we get any change happening. And clearly, what your employees and candidates are now looking for, is change. We hope that the debate over the value of diverse teams is now over. There is plenty of evidence that diverse teams lead to better decisions and therefore, business outcomes for any organisation.
This means that CHROs today are being charged with interrupting the bias in their people decisions and expected to manage bias as closely as the CFO manages the financials. But the use of Ai tools in hiring and promotion requires careful consideration to ensure the technology does not inadvertently introduce bias or amplify any existing biases. To assist HR decision-makers to navigate these decisions confidently, we invite you to consider these 8 critical questions when selecting your Ai technology. You will find not only the key questions to ask when testing the tools but why these are critical questions to ask and how to differentiate between the answers you are given.
This guide is presented by Sapia whose AI-powered, text chat talent assessment tool has a user satisfaction rate of 99%.
Retail leaders have embraced AI to improve supply chains, automate checkout, and enhance customer experience. But what about finding the people who deliver that customer experience?
AI brings incredible possibilities to supercharge how retailers hire, develop, and retain talent.
At Sapia.ai, we helped iconic retailers like Woolworths, Starbucks, Holland & Barrett, and David Jones reimagine hiring from the ground up – replacing resumes, ghosting, and gut feel with structured, ethical AI that delivers performance and fairness at scale.
The Retail Problem: Volume, Turnover, and Ghosting
Retail is high volume. It’s high churn. And it’s high stakes for candidate experience:
And yet, most hiring still relies on broken tools: resumes, forms, manual processes, and outdated systems.
Sapia.ai: The AI-Native Hiring Engine Built for Retail
Our platform automates the entire “apply to decide” journey, leveraging AI & automation to streamline the hiring process & bring intelligence into retail hiring.
Smart Interviewer™: Mobile-first, chat-based, structured interviews for a holistic candidate assessment.
Live Interview™: AI-driven bulk interview scheduling without calendar chaos.
InterviewAssist™: Instant interview guide generation.
Discover Insights: Embedded analytics to track hiring health in real-time.
Phai: GenAI coach for career and leadership potential.
Unlike resume parsing or generic chatbots, Sapia.ai assesses soft skills, communication, and culture fit using natural language processing and validated psychometrics. It’s ethical AI built in, not bolted on.
From Application to Interview in Under 24 Hours
Candidates don’t want to wait. They don’t want to be ghosted. And they don’t want resumes to define them.
> 80% of Sapia.ai chat interviews are completed in under 24 hours.
We see consistently high completion across categories: grocery, merchandising, home improvement, and luxury retail.
“It was fast, fair, and I actually got feedback. That never happens.” – Retail Candidate Feedback
Real Impact, Across Every Retail Category
Sapia.ai powers hiring for millions of candidates across diverse retail environments:
Impact of Sapia.ai on Retail Hiring in 2024 | |||
Category | Hours Saved | FTEs Saved | Cost Saved |
Grocery | 272k | 131 | $6.5m |
General Merchandise | 193k | 93 | $4.6m |
Specialty Retail | 133k | 64 | $3.2m |
Home Improvements | 103k | 50 | $2.5m |
Merchandising | 22k | 11 | $0.5m |
Luxury | 9k | 4 | $0.2m |
The savings created by intelligent, AI-native automation have unlocked team capacity, impacted retailers’ P&L, and improved store readiness.
Speed That Delivers Real ROI
Every candidate gets interviewed instantly. No waiting. No bias. Just fast, fair, data-backed decisions. This generates real impact for retailers who previously relied on slow, outdated processes to handle thousands of applicants.
DEI by Design, Not by Mandate
With Sapia.ai:
DEI Fairness Scores (based on actual hiring data):
Gender: 1.03 (vs customer baseline of 1.01)
Ethnicity: 1.15 (vs customer baseline of 0.74)
Why? Because ethical AI removes what humans can’t unlearn: bias. With a candidate experience that is inclusive by design, retailers can ensure fairness in screening, and measure it in hiring.
Candidate Experience = Brand Experience
Retail candidates are your customers. And the experience you give them matters. We have built a brand advocacy engine that delights candidates and gives you the data to prove it.
Responsible, Explainable AI Built for Retail
Not all AI is created equally. Since 2018, Sapia.ai has been built on a foundation of responsible AI:
“We can’t go back to life before Sapia.ai. We used to spend half the day reading resumes.”
— Talent Lead, Starbucks AU
What’s at Stake: Time, Brand, and Revenue
Every day spent using outdated hiring methods costs retailers:
With Sapia.ai, you get the productivity unlock retail hiring demands, and the intelligence your talent deserves.
Want to see how fast, fair, and human retail hiring can be?
We can’t hide from reality anymore. Talent needs are shifting overnight, and AI is redefining what it means to work. Traditional talent frameworks are no longer fit for purpose. At Sapia.ai, we believe the future of talent strategy lies in a smarter, fairer, and more adaptive way of defining what great looks like.
Our AI hiring platform is built on the largest proprietary dataset of interview answers globally – we’re a data company at heart, and we’ve seen the power of data-driven people methodology in transforming how organisations hire and retain good talent.
So, when it came to building a new Competency Framework that could be leveraged globally for hiring for any role at any scale, of course, we used a ground-up, data-led methodology that bridges the gap between organisational psychology and AI.
Conventional frameworks are typically crafted through expert interviews and focus groups. While valuable, they tend to be subjective, static, and too slow to keep pace with evolving job demands. As roles become more fluid and technology augments or replaces task-based skills, organisations need a new way to understand the human capabilities that genuinely matter for performance.
We wanted to identify enduring, job-agnostic competencies that reflect what drives success in a modern workplace – capabilities like adaptability, resilience, learning agility, and customer orientation.
(Why competencies and not just skills? Read why here.)
Sapia.ai’s methodology is rooted in the science of human behaviour but powered by cutting-edge AI. We asked two core questions:
The answer to both: yes.
We began with a rich dataset of over 37,000 job descriptions across industries and role types. Using large language models (LLMs) and advanced NLP techniques, we extracted over 200,000 behavioural descriptors. These were distilled down through a four-step process:
This resulted in a refined list of 25 human-centric competencies, each with clear behavioural indicators and practical relevance across a wide range of roles.
Our framework is intelligent, but importantly, it’s adaptive. Organisations can apply this methodology to their own job descriptions to discover custom competencies. This bottom-up, role-data-led approach ensures alignment to real work, not just theoretical models.
And because the framework integrates directly with our AI-powered hiring tools, you get a connected system that brings your talent strategy to life.
Our framework comes to life in the following tools:
Skills alone cannot predict success. Competencies do. As AI continues transforming how we work, Sapia.ai’s Competency Framework offers a scalable, scientific, and fair foundation for hiring and developing the talent of tomorrow.
If you’re a CHRO or Head of Recruitment at an enterprise today, chances are you’ve been inundated with messages about the importance of “skills-based hiring.” LinkedIn’s recent Work Change Report (2025) is full of compelling data: a 140% increase in the rate at which professionals are adding new skills to their profiles since 2022, and a projection that by 2030, 70% of the skills used in most jobs today will have changed.
This is essential reading. But there’s a missed opportunity: the singular focus on “skills” fails to acknowledge the real metric that talent leaders need to be using to future-proof their workforce — competencies.
But skills on their own — even soft ones — are generic, disjointed, and often disconnected from real-world performance. In contrast:
Put simply, competencies answer the all-important question: Can this person apply the right skills, in the right way, at the right time, to deliver results in our environment?
The Work Change Report outlines a future where job titles are fluid, roles evolve quickly, and AI is a constant disruptor. This creates three massive challenges for hiring at scale:
Skills alone don’t tell us whether someone can succeed in a role that will look different 12 months from now. But competencies can. Because they measure not just what a person knows, but how they apply it.
The LinkedIn report highlights a critical insight: organisations now prioritise agility in entry-level hiring. And there’s a good reason for that. With professionals expected to hold twice as many jobs over their careers compared to 15 years ago, adaptability is not just a nice-to-have. It’s core to success.
But you can’t measure agility with a keyword on a CV. You measure it by looking at competencies like:
When you shift the focus away from skills to behavioural competencies that can be defined, observed, and assessed in structured ways, you open yourself up to a much more dynamic and more useful way of managing talent.
To hire effectively at scale, particularly in a technology-driven world of work, talent leaders must shift their lens:
LinkedIn’s data shows that people are learning more skills more quickly than ever. But the real question for talent leaders like you is: Are those skills being applied in ways that drive value? Are we hiring for task proficiency or performance?
The truth is that the organisations that will thrive in an AI-driven, skills-fluid economy aren’t the ones chasing the next hot skill. They’re the ones designing systems to identify, develop and scale competence.
Sapia.ai has developed a comprehensive Competency Framework using a data-driven approach. Download the full paper here.