Top 15 Hire Success Alternatives and Competitors

The best Hire Success alternatives in 2026 are Testlify for teams that want skills tests, AI interviews and proctoring in one tool, TestGorilla if you need a free plan to start, TestDome if your hiring comes in bursts and you refuse to buy a subscription, and Codility, HackerRank or HackerEarth if every role you fill writes code. Hire Success has sold personality, integrity, aptitude and skills tests since 1998, and it's still a fair choice for a call center or logistics firm that wants a baseline profile and a plain report. Where it falls short is everything hiring has added since: conversational AI interviews, work-sample tasks in real spreadsheets and code editors, AI-cheating detection, and a price you can read before you talk to sales.

This guide compares 15 alternatives on the things that actually change a hiring decision: what each one tests, how it stops cheating, whether it interviews as well as tests, how it fits the ATS you already run, and what it costs. Every price below was read from the vendor's own site on 5 September 2026, and the two we couldn't read that day are marked.

TL;DR

• Hire Success is a 1998-vintage pre-employment testing suite (personality, integrity, aptitude, skills) with quote-only pricing. Teams leave it for AI interviewing, deeper work samples, stronger proctoring and transparent plans.
• If you searched for a HireSelect alternative, that's a different product: HireSelect is Criteria Corp's platform name. The same shortlist works for both, and the section below explains why.
• Testlify is the closest all-in-one replacement: 3,500+ tests, 25+ question types, one-way and conversational AI video interviews, dual-device proctoring, from $139 a month billed annually.
• Only 9 of the 15 vendors publish a price. TestDome ($20 a candidate, no subscription) and TestGorilla (free plan) are the cheapest ways to start; Vervoe, Mercer Mettl, iMocha, HireVue, eSkill and Hire Success itself need a sales call.
• Pick by role mix, not by brand: coding-only teams should stay on a developer platform, everyone else should buy a library that covers the whole company.
• Whatever you choose, combine at least two signals (a skills test plus a structured interview) and keep the final call human.

What is Hire Success and what does it cost?

Hire Success is a pre-employment testing platform that has run since 1998 and sells four families of tests: personality, integrity, aptitude and job-specific skills. Its signature feature is baseline matching: you profile your best current employees, then score applicants against that "ideal candidate" profile. It also ships cheating alerts and time limits, shareable candidate reports, a branded career site, a custom test builder and a simple applicant-tracking layer. The buyers it names on its own site are small and mid-size firms in transportation and logistics, call centers, healthcare, finance and staffing.

Pricing is the first surprise. Hire Success offers a monthly or annual subscription sized to your hiring volume, or pay-as-you-go assessment credits that never expire, with no long-term contract. But it prints no numbers. You fill in a quote form and a rep calls to "discuss your needs". Every one of the 15 tools below is judged partly on whether it does better than that.

Looking for a HireSelect alternative instead?

HireSelect and Hire Success are two different companies, and Google routinely sends people searching for one to pages about the other. HireSelect is the platform name Criteria Corp used for most of its history and still uses for its customer login portals; the tests behind it (the CCAT cognitive aptitude test, personality, emotional intelligence, skills, game-based and risk assessments, plus video interviewing) are now sold under the Criteria brand. Hire Success is an independent testing vendor with its own personality, integrity and aptitude battery.

The good news for a buyer: the shortlist is the same. Both products are pre-employment testing suites aimed at smaller employers, both price by quote, and both are being replaced by the same set of tools for the same reasons (AI interviews, work samples, proctoring, transparent pricing). Read the 15 alternatives below with your actual role mix in mind, then use the dedicated Criteria Corp alternatives comparison if you want a head-to-head on the CCAT specifically.

Why do teams look for a Hire Success alternative?

Teams leave Hire Success for four reasons, and price is rarely the first one. The battery is built around traits and general aptitude rather than the task the person will do on Monday. Sackett and colleagues' 2022 re-analysis of selection research, summarised by the Society for Industrial and Organizational Psychology, puts structured interviews (.42), job-knowledge tests (.40) and work samples (.33) ahead of general cognitive ability (.31) as predictors of job performance. A platform that can only run a personality and aptitude test leaves the strongest signals on the table.

The second reason is fraud. Gartner's July 2025 candidate survey found 6% of 3,000 candidates admitting to interview fraud, and predicted that 1 in 4 candidate profiles worldwide will be fake by 2028. "Cheating alerts" that notice a candidate leaving the test window don't catch a second person on a phone or an AI assistant in another tab.

Third, the skills themselves keep moving. The World Economic Forum's Future of Jobs Report 2025 expects 39% of workers' existing skill sets to be transformed or outdated between 2025 and 2030 (skills outlook). A test library that took shape before spreadsheets moved to the browser can't tell you whether a candidate can work with an AI tool, and that's now a real job requirement for an analyst, a marketer or a support agent.

And fourth, the sales call. Owner-led companies making a handful of hires a quarter want to see a price, run a trial and pay by card. Nine of the vendors below let you do exactly that.

How did we evaluate these Hire Success alternatives?

Six criteria, weighted toward what a 20-to-200-person company actually buys. Library and role coverage: can one tool test the warehouse lead, the bookkeeper and the developer? Assessment integrity: identity checks, AI-assistance detection and a human review step, not just a tab-switch counter. Interview depth: can it run a structured or AI-led interview, or only a test? Workflow fit: does it push results into the ATS you already run? Pricing transparency: is there a public number and a card-payment trial? Candidate experience: browser-only, mobile fallback, plain-language reports the candidate can also see.

Every capability claim for Testlify comes from its production product, not marketing copy. Every competitor claim comes from that vendor's own site on 5 September 2026. No G2 or Capterra scores appear on this page because neither directory can be verified by automation on the study date, and a star rating you can't audit isn't evidence.

Pro tip: before you shortlist anything, count how many distinct roles you'll hire in the next 12 months. Under three, and all of them technical, a developer platform is cheaper. Three or more across functions, and you'll pay twice if you buy a coding tool now and a general library later.

How do the alternatives compare on price?

Only nine of the 15 publish a starting price. Where a vendor doesn't, the table says so rather than guessing. Prices are as shown on each vendor's site on 5 September 2026; HackerRank and eSkill are from the same check run on 4 September 2026 because their pricing pages don't render to automated readers.

1. Testlify

Testlify is a skills assessment and AI interviewing platform, and it's the closest like-for-like replacement for Hire Success because it covers the same four test families (personality and culture, cognitive ability, psychometric, role-specific skills) and then adds the parts Hire Success never built. The test library holds 3,500+ tests, from blue-collar and typing tests to coding, language, situational judgement and gamified assessments, with 25+ question types including tasks inside real Google Sheets, Excel, Word and PowerPoint files.

Key features

• AI interviews that talk back: one-way video, two-way conversational AI video, voice questions and outbound AI phone interviews (billed at $0.18 a minute), with selectable avatars and voices, custom prompts, attempt and recording-time limits, automatic multilingual transcripts and auto-scoring that a human can override.
• Dual-device proctoring: the candidate's phone becomes a second camera pointed at them and their screen, and the test won't start until it's live. Add photo-ID face matching, AI-tool and browser-extension detection, and a green, yellow or red trust flag that recommends a manual review rather than auto-rejecting.
• Item-level psychometrics: a difficulty index, discrimination index and quality-risk flag on every question, the kind of data a test publisher keeps to itself.
• Scoring you control: per-test weights from x0 to x5, negative marking, benchmarks and percentile ranks, and a toggle that keeps AI scores advisory ("AI scores and insights are for guidance only. Use human judgment for final decisions.").
• Fits your stack: 100+ ATS integrations (Greenhouse, Lever, Workday, SAP SuccessFactors and more), sold as an add-on on the self-serve tiers, so your ATS stays the system of record. Teams without an ATS get a simple built-in pipeline: post a job, take applications, screen with evidence, move candidates through stages.

Limitations

Testlify doesn't schedule live human interview panels; it runs the AI-led and one-way interviews and hands the shortlist to your calendar. Candidates need a Chromium browser on a desktop, with the mobile app as a recording fallback rather than a way to sit a whole assessment on a phone. And the 100-credit Starter tier is sized for a small team; a 300-hire-a-year operation belongs on Business or above.

Best for and pricing

Owner-led companies and agencies hiring across several functions, and any team that wants tests, interviews and proctoring on one invoice. Pricing is public and billed on credits (one credit per started assessment): Starter is $139 a month billed annually ($1,668 a year) for 100 credits and 3 seats, Basic is $279 a month for 300 credits, Business is $699 a month for 1,000 credits, and Premium, Enterprise and Custom are on contact. Monthly billing exists at different credit counts. ATS integrations, white labeling and SSO are $2,388 a year add-ons on the self-serve tiers and included on Custom. There's a 7-day free trial with no card and a 30-day money-back guarantee.

2. TestGorilla

TestGorilla is the volume seller in this category: a large library of short tests, assessments built by stacking five of them, and a free plan that lets a two-person company run real screens before spending anything. If Hire Success felt like buying a car to cross the street, this is the bike.

Key features

• 350+ tests on the Core plan, covering cognitive ability, personality and culture, language, software skills and role-specific knowledge.
• Video questions and custom questions for soft-skill checks, with up to 20 custom questions per assessment on the Plus plan.
• Anonymised scoring and standardised report formats aimed at reducing interviewer bias.
• Plus-tier extras: AI interviews, job simulations, custom tests and coding challenges, plus talent-sourcing access to its candidate pool.

Limitations

Seats, not credits, drive the price, and the Core plan tops out at two full-access seats. Anti-cheating is behaviour-signal based (tab switches, snapshots) rather than identity or AI-detection based, and the free plan's 10 credits a month run out fast. It's also annual-commitment only above the free tier, which hurts seasonal hirers.

Best for and pricing

Small teams that want breadth at a low fixed price. Free is $0 with 10 credits a month and one seat; Core is $142 a month on an annual commitment ($1,704 a year) with two seats; Plus starts at $400 a month ($4,800 a year) with unlimited seats; Enterprise is on contact. Read the TestGorilla alternatives breakdown if seat pricing is the sticking point.

3. Adaface

Adaface runs its tests as a chat with "Ada", a bot that asks scenario questions the way a recruiter would, which tends to lift completion rates on entry and mid-level roles. Its library is broad (it claims 500+ tests) and its credit pricing starts lower than anyone else's on this list.

Key features

• Conversational assessments that adapt the next question to the last answer.
• Pass, borderline and fail buckets applied automatically so a hiring manager sees a shortlist, not a spreadsheet.
• In-house question authoring with regular re-validation against public AI tools.
• Credit accounting: 5 credits for a ready-made test, 10 for a custom one, 1 per invite, refunded if unused.

Limitations

The chat format is the product; if you want a spreadsheet task, a live coding room or a video interview with an avatar, it's not here. Proctoring is lighter than the dedicated tools, and everything is billed annually.

Best for and pricing

Low-volume teams screening non-technical and junior technical roles. Individual is $180 a year for 12 credits, Starter $500 for 50, Pro $900 for 100, Scale $3,000 for 500, Growth $5,500 for 1,000, Enterprise $20,000 for 5,000, with a 14-day trial. The Adaface alternatives guide covers what to buy when the chat format runs out of road.

4. Vervoe

Vervoe's whole pitch is "watch them do the job": candidates complete simulations in text, video, file upload and spreadsheet formats, and an AI grader ranks the responses. For customer support, sales and operations roles that's a closer look than any personality profile gives you.

Key features

• Multi-format simulations (text, video, files, spreadsheets) built from a library of role-based templates.
• AI grading and ranking on accuracy, effort and relevance, trained further on your own reviewers' scores.
• Team review with shared feedback on a single candidate view.

Limitations

Pricing is quote-only; the public page carries no number at all. The AI grader improves as you feed it your own grading data, which a 20-hire-a-year company never accumulates. Technical depth is thinner than a developer platform.

Best for and pricing

Mid-size teams hiring frontline and operations roles at steady volume. No published price; you request pricing or book a demo. See the Vervoe alternatives comparison for tools with a public price list.

5. Codility

Codility is an engineering-only platform: coding, SQL, multiple-choice and AI-skill tasks, a live collaborative interview room, and plagiarism and integrity signals tuned for code. If Hire Success was covering your developer hiring, this is a real upgrade for that slice and useless for everything else.

Key features

• Screen and Interview on one invite credit, with engineering work simulations in the task library.
• Agentic AI Copilot with reviewable activity, so candidates can use AI and you can see how they used it.
• Task leakage protection and plagiarism detection built for coding answers.

Limitations

Annual billing only, one platform user on Starter, and no library for non-engineering roles. Proctoring on the entry tier is snapshots only; premium proctoring and video recording sit on the Custom plan.

Best for and pricing

Companies whose hiring is mostly software engineers. Starter is $1,200 a year for one user and up to 120 invite credits; Scale is $6,000 a year for three users and up to 300 credits (capped at 25 a month); Custom is on contact. Free trials are arranged through sales. The Codility alternatives guide ranks the like-for-like developer platforms.

6. Mercer Mettl

Mercer Mettl is the enterprise psychometrics option: research-backed behavioural and cognitive assessments, plus a proctoring stack that includes live human invigilation. It's the closest thing here to Hire Success's trait-first philosophy, done at corporate scale.

Key features

• Behavioural, cognitive and technical assessments mapped to competency frameworks.
• Proctoring tiers from AI face recognition and browser lockdown to live human proctors, which matters for certification-grade exams.
• Branded test experience on a dedicated domain.

Limitations

Quote-only pricing, a sales-led onboarding, and a candidate experience built for campus drives rather than a five-person startup. Not the tool for a card-and-go trial.

Best for and pricing

Large employers, campus hiring and certification programs. Pricing is customised per organisation; you request a quote or a demo. The Mercer Mettl alternatives comparison lists the self-serve options.

7. iMocha

iMocha sells a skills inventory as much as a hiring tool: a large question bank mapped to thousands of skills, an AI interviewer, and reporting that follows an employee from screening into upskilling. If you want one skills taxonomy across hiring and L&D, it's built for that.

Key features

• Large skills-mapped library across IT, finance, languages and niche enterprise software.
• Custom test builder mixing library questions with your own.
• AI interviewer and skills analytics by domain, skill group and question category.

Limitations

No public price on the study date; the pricing page is a demo form. The upskilling half of the product is overhead for a company that only wants to screen.

Best for and pricing

Enterprises running skills programs, not just hiring. Quote on request. The iMocha alternatives list covers the hiring-only tools.

8. HireVue

HireVue is the incumbent in high-volume video interviewing: on-demand and live video with structured scoring, game-based cognitive assessments, and scheduling and chatbot automation for thousands of applicants a month. Since May 2023 it also owns Modern Hire (more on that below).

Key features

• Structured video interviews with rubric scoring and a validated question library.
• Game-based assessments for problem-solving and cognitive traits.
• Automation: interview scheduling, candidate chat and ATS workflows.

Limitations

It's priced and sold for enterprise volume; the pricing page names an Essential and a Premium package and no figure for either without a demo. Skills testing beyond video and games is thin, and a 30-hire-a-year company will find the platform heavier than the problem.

Best for and pricing

Retail, hospitality and contact-center employers screening at scale. Not published; demo required. The full HireVue alternatives roundup goes deeper on video-first tools.

9. TestDome

TestDome is the anti-subscription option. You buy a pack of candidate invites, they never expire, and an invite is refunded if the candidate doesn't finish within six days. The tests are work-sample style (programming, IT, accounting, customer service, data entry) rather than trait questionnaires.

Key features

• Work-sample tests that mirror real tasks, with pass/fail indicators and percentile ranks.
• Custom questions you can mix with the library.
• Auto top-up when a pack hits 90% used, so a hiring burst doesn't stall.

Limitations

No interviews, no personality battery worth the name, and proctoring is basic. It's a testing tool, full stop, and that's why it's cheap.

Best for and pricing

Companies whose hiring arrives in bursts and who refuse a subscription. Starter is $20 a candidate for a 5-pack ($100), Small $16 for 25 ($400), Medium $10 for 100 ($1,000), Large $8 for 300 ($2,400), Extra Large $7 for 600 ($4,200). No subscription, no expiry. The TestDome alternatives guide covers what to add when you outgrow it.

10. Coderbyte

Coderbyte is a developer-assessment platform priced for small and mid-size companies: one flat annual fee for unlimited candidates and admins, or a cheap monthly plan when you only need 20 invites. It pairs coding challenges and take-home projects with a live interview room.

Key features

• Coding challenges, multiple choice, written and SQL questions across 30+ languages.
• Live technical interviews with a shared editor, video and a whiteboard.
• Replayable coding sessions and automated scorecards.

Limitations

Developer-only. The base plan is lean; API and ATS integrations, SSO, branding, premium proctoring and personality testing are each a paid add-on (roughly $1,199 to $1,499 a year apiece on the study date).

Best for and pricing

Startups hiring engineers and data scientists at unpredictable volume. Monthly is $99 for 20 invites ($20 per extra invite, unused invites roll over); Pro is $1,799 a year for unlimited candidates and admins; pay-as-you-go is $500 per 50 invites; Enterprise starts at $12,495 a year. A free trial is included.

11. Skillmeter

Skillmeter is a small, cloud-based testing tool for building your own timed, scored quizzes. There's no big library and no AI; you write the questions, candidates take them in a branded test center, and you get a report. For a company that already knows exactly what it wants to ask, that simplicity is the feature.

Key features

• 12 question types including multiple choice, essay and programming.
• PIN-code candidate invites and per-session reports.
• Own subdomain and branding on every plan.

Limitations

No library to speak of, no proctoring beyond timing, no interviews, and it doesn't list any ATS connectors. Candidate caps apply on the two lower plans.

Best for and pricing

Very small teams with their own question bank. Standard is EUR 49 a month (5 users, 50 candidates a month), Premium EUR 99 (10 users, 100 candidates), Ultimate EUR 199 (unlimited users and candidates, programming tests). Month-to-month, 14-day free trial.

12. HackerEarth

HackerEarth is a technical screening platform with an unusually deep question bank and proctoring that watches the webcam, the tabs and the audio. It's the developer platform with the friendliest entry price, and it handles campus-style drives well.

Key features

• Large technical library across software, data, AI/ML, DevOps and cloud, in multiple-choice, project and video formats.
• FaceCode interviews with a shared editor and whiteboard.
• Proctoring: webcam monitoring, tab tracking, audio detection, with live human proctoring on request.

Limitations

Engineering-only, and the Growth plan's 10 credits a month with a single admin is tight for anything beyond a trickle of hires.

Best for and pricing

Teams screening developers at volume on a budget. Growth is $99 a month billed monthly (1 admin, 10 credits a month); Scale is $399 a month (unlimited admins, 25 credits a month); Enterprise is on contact.

13. HackerRank

HackerRank is the best-known developer hiring platform and the one large engineering organisations tend to standardise on. Screening, take-homes and live interviews sit in one flow, with pair programming and system-design boards for later rounds.

Key features

• Curated technical questions across frontend, backend, data, security and QA roles.
• Interview workflows combining screens, take-home tests and live sessions.
• Integrity tools: webcam recording, copy detection and time analysis.

Limitations

Developer-only, priced above the other coding tools at the entry tier, and the pricing page doesn't render to automated readers, so treat the figure below as a 4 September 2026 reading rather than today's.

Best for and pricing

Established engineering teams that want the platform candidates already know. Starter was $199 a month, or $1,990 a year, including Screen and Interview with 120 attempts a year, when read on 4 September 2026. The HackerRank alternatives comparison lists cheaper developer options.

14. TestInvite

TestInvite is an exam engine as much as a hiring tool: lockdown browser, randomised question banks, video and audio monitoring, and fine control over scoring, composites and rubrics. If you certify people as well as hire them, it earns its place.

Key features

• All question types from multiple choice to coding and video responses, with multi-step assessments on higher tiers.
• Exam-grade security: lockdown mode, AI cheating detection, randomisation, monitoring.
• Custom reporting and REST API on the Pro tier and above.

Limitations

The entry tier is deliberately small (5 tests, 1 teammate, 250 questions) and the plan ladder climbs quickly. It's a builder's tool; there's less of a ready-made role library than the assessment platforms carry.

Best for and pricing

Organisations that need exam-level control over their own tests. Starter is $900 a year (500 credits, 5 tests, 1 teammate), Essential $1,900, Advanced $2,900, Pro $3,900, Premium $6,000 with unlimited credits, Premium+ $35,000; enterprise pay-as-you-go starts at $9,900 a year. Free sign-up, no card.

15. eSkill

eSkill is the closest cousin to Hire Success on this list: a long-established pre-employment testing vendor with hundreds of ready-made tests for clerical, software, literacy and numeracy, accounting, legal and call-center roles, plus interactive job simulations. The overlap is also why switching between the two changes less than you'd hope.

Key features

• Configurable tests assembled from a large subject-and-topic question pool.
• Job simulations for customer-service calls, data entry and IT troubleshooting.
• Behavioural anti-cheating flags for copy-paste, window switching and odd response patterns.

Limitations

Quote-only pricing (the pricing URL returned nothing on the study date), no conversational AI interviewing, and identity-grade proctoring is absent.

Best for and pricing

Clerical, admin and contact-center hiring where a simulation matters more than a personality profile. Quote on request. The eSkill alternatives list is the better starting point if you want a public price.

Which HireVue alternatives and competitors are here?

Google sends a steady trickle of people searching for a HireVue alternative to this page, so here's the straight answer. HireVue is entry number 8 above, and the HireVue competitors on this list are Testlify, Vervoe, Mercer Mettl, iMocha and TestGorilla. Testlify is the direct match if what you want is video: it runs one-way video, two-way conversational AI video, voice and AI phone interviews with avatars, custom prompts and human-overridable scoring, and it adds the skills library HireVue lacks. Vervoe swaps video for job simulations. Mercer Mettl and iMocha bring their own AI interviewers with heavier proctoring. The other nine are testing tools, not interview tools, and won't replace HireVue on their own. The dedicated HireVue alternatives roundup ranks 15 video-capable options.

HireVue alternatives for soft skills

Soft skills need an interview or a simulation, not a multiple-choice test. The HireVue alternatives that measure them best are Testlify (situational judgement tests, personality and culture assessments, and AI video interviews that transcribe and score communication), Vervoe (text and video simulations graded on relevance), TestGorilla (personality and culture-add tests with video questions) and Mercer Mettl (behavioural psychometrics). Adaface's chat-style scenarios work for junior customer-facing roles. A caveat: an AI score on "communication" is a starting point for a human reviewer, not a verdict, and Testlify says so in the product itself.

Modern Hire, HirePro or Hired alternatives too?

Three more names land on this page from search, and each needs a different answer.

Modern Hire alternatives

Modern Hire no longer exists as a standalone vendor. HireVue acquired it on 9 May 2023 and folded it into the HireVue family with immediate effect (HR Dive). So a Modern Hire alternative is a HireVue alternative: Testlify, Vervoe, Mercer Mettl, iMocha and TestGorilla from this list, and the longer Modern Hire comparison walks the feature-by-feature differences.

HirePro alternative

HirePro is an India-based campus-hiring and proctored-assessment platform: coding and functional assessments, AI proctoring with face matching and suspicion scoring, and the infrastructure to run a placement drive for thousands of graduates at once. The HirePro alternatives on this list are Testlify (dual-device proctoring, photo-ID face match, 3,500+ tests across functions), Mercer Mettl (live human proctoring for campus scale), HackerEarth (developer drives at a low monthly price) and TestInvite (exam-grade lockdown). If your drives are India-only and campus-only, HirePro's local support is a real advantage none of these fully match.

Hired alternatives

Hired was a tech-talent marketplace, not an assessment tool, and on the study date hired.com redirects to the website of LHH, the Adecco Group brand that absorbed it. None of the 15 tools above finds candidates for you the way a marketplace did. What they do is screen the candidates you already have, so the honest Hired alternative is a sourcing channel (a job board, an agency, LinkedIn) with a skills assessment bolted on after the application lands.

Which Hire Success alternative should you pick?

Start with the role, not the brand. The Testlify Competency-to-Evidence Matrix maps every role to the competencies that matter, then connects each competency to measurable evidence through assessments, simulations, interviews, references and structured feedback. Run your next three hires through it and the shortlist writes itself.

1. Mixed roles across the company (ops, finance, sales, support, one developer): you need a library that covers all of them plus an interview step. Testlify, then TestGorilla if the budget is under $150 a month.
2. Engineering only: Codility for rigour, HackerEarth for price, HackerRank for name recognition, Coderbyte for unlimited volume.
3. Bursty hiring, no subscription: TestDome, and add a structured interview of your own.
4. High-volume frontline with video: Testlify's AI video and phone interviews at self-serve pricing, HireVue or Vervoe if you're big enough to justify a sales cycle.
5. Trait-first, like Hire Success but bigger: Mercer Mettl or eSkill, accepting quote-only pricing.

Two things hold whatever you choose. First, one signal is fragile: a personality profile alone, or a coding test alone, misses what the other would catch, which is exactly the gap the validity research above describes. Second, the US labor market is still moving at 5.1 million hires a month against 7.3 million openings (BLS JOLTS, July 2026), so a screen that takes a week to score costs you the candidate. Pick a tool that returns a ranked shortlist the same day.

Hire on what candidates can do

If Hire Success's baseline profile was the only evidence in your process, the cheapest upgrade is to add a work sample and a structured interview, and Testlify runs both from the same invite. Start the 7-day free trial (no card needed) or book a 20-minute demo and bring one real job description; the AI assessment builder will draft the first test from it while you watch.

Key takeaways

• Hire Success is a trait-and-aptitude battery with quote-only pricing. That's fine for a baseline profile, but the 2022 validity re-analysis ranks structured interviews and work samples above general aptitude, so a tool that can't run those is leaving predictive power on the table.
• HireSelect is Criteria Corp, not Hire Success. If that's the product you're leaving, the same 15 alternatives apply; use the Criteria-specific comparison for a CCAT head-to-head.
• Only nine of 15 vendors publish a price. Testlify, TestGorilla, Adaface, Codility, TestDome, Coderbyte, Skillmeter, HackerEarth and TestInvite let you see the number and start on a card; the rest need a sales call, exactly like Hire Success.
• Buy for your role mix. Developer platforms are cheaper per engineer and useless for the bookkeeper; a general library costs more per test and covers the whole company. Count next year's roles before you compare prices.
• Fraud is now a purchase criterion. With Gartner predicting 1 in 4 fake candidate profiles by 2028, identity checks, AI-tool detection and a human review step belong on your checklist, not the "nice to have" list.
• Two signals beat one. Pair a skills test with a structured interview and keep the decision with a person; the tools here differ mostly in how easily they let you do that.

FAQs