Top 10 Soft Skills Assessment Tools for 2025

Success in the workplace has very little to do with college grades or fancy recommendations from big-name employers.

What hiring managers actually need to know is whether their candidates have the necessary skills to succeed in their roles — and this usually comes down to a mix of hard and soft skills.

The question is, how do you test for soft skills that are hard to quantify, don’t appear on resumes, and don’t necessarily shine through in interviews? We recommend integrating soft skills assessment tools into your recruiting process.

If you aren’t sure how that works, we’ll explain it all with a rundown of the best soft skills testing tools for 2025.

TL;DR—Key Takeaways

• Soft skills assessments test personality traits and non-technical skills. They complement hard skills tests, delivering a rounded portrait of every candidate.
• Soft skills are key in modern workplaces that rely on problem-solving, creativity, and managing remote teams. Companies need employees with technical knowledge and personalities that suit their company culture.
• Critical soft skills to test include communication skills, teamwork, leadership, problem-solving, time management, and critical thinking. When building role-specific assessments, choose skills that match your job descriptions.
• Tips for using soft skills tests include adding assessments at the start of the hiring process. Use interviews and workplace scenarios to explore specific skills. And encourage candidates to self-assess their personalities.
• Challenges linked to soft skills tests include avoiding bias and choosing the right skills for each role. Companies need ways to assess testing data and derive valuable insights. HR teams must also consider whether candidates can develop skills when in post.

What is a soft skills assessment?

A soft skills assessment evaluates non-technical skills important for professional success. These include teamwork, time management, emotional intelligence, and critical thinking. The exact mix of soft skills you’re looking for will depend on role requirements and your company culture.

Resumes, interviews, and application forms provide few insights into who people are and how they will perform in the workplace. Online assessment fills this gap, allowing HR teams to discover hires with the right mix of technical and non-technical skills.

It’s important to note that soft skills testing is not completely objective. Assessments generate qualitative evidence for recruiters to use, while technical assessments produce quantitative data about specific skills. That’s why combining both techniques is so powerful.

Why are soft skills so important at work these days?

Words like “soft” and “hard” suggest a hierarchy of skills, but names can be misleading. Soft skills are more in demand than ever, and their importance only trends upwards. Here are some great reasons why:

• Remote or hybrid workplaces are now commonplace. As a result, they need project management experts and team members who can organize their time, communicate smoothly, and work independently.
• Artificial intelligence (AI) is another factor. As algorithms and large language models assume center stage, employers are prioritizing healthy workplace cultures marked by creative thinking and empathy.
• Innovative and agile companies have a competitive advantage. Employees who can solve problems quickly and creatively are huge assets. They drive business innovation and ensure a steady stream of candidates for leadership roles.
• Soft skills help employees handle workplace conflicts. Companies focused on soft skills will see fewer disputes about discrimination and realize the benefits of a more diverse workforce.
• Services and care work are growing while manufacturing declines. More jobs than ever demand interpersonal skills to care for clients and maintain corporate reputations.
• Businesses increasingly appreciate the importance of a positive company culture. Soft skills like problem-solving, adaptability, and negotiation all enhance collaboration. They knit workforces together, making companies more resilient.
• A thriving company culture tends to improve job satisfaction. Companies with better stocks of soft skills tend to enjoy better employee retention and productivity.

When you take all of that into account, it’s clear that soft skills matter a lot. They aren’t nice-to-have by-products of recruiting processes. Not anymore.

Are soft skills assessment tools reliable?

Before you start assessing candidates or comparing the soft skills assessment tools below, it helps to consider a couple of frequently asked questions.

For instance, Toggl Hire users often ask us whether assessment tools reliably rate soft skills or do a better job than interviews or gut instinct. Our answer to that is simple: soft skills assessment tools are generally reliable if you use them wisely.

With hard skills, it’s easy to judge competency. Soft skills are different. The results from a soft skills test leave room for interpretation. There’s no escaping that fact, but if you understand the limitations of testing, you can glean invaluable insights.

Here are some of the key challenges businesses face when assessing soft skills.

Showcasing competency

Soft skills aren’t as clear-cut as hard skills, so you need to create situations where candidates can showcase their abilities. That’s tricky during the traditional interview process. During resume screening, candidates can’t exhibit skills such as verbal communication and leadership. As a result, many hiring managers start assessing soft skills after initially screening candidates.

Overcoming unconscious bias

Whether we like it or not, we all hold unconscious bias. Soft skills are subjective, so what one person thinks is great, another may think isn’t. It’s hard to overcome this in settings such as interviews, so we need additional measures to improve fairness and objectivity.

Black-and-white thinking

Some people believe you either do or don’t possess soft skills. For example, rather than assess a candidate’s communication skills, recruiters jump to the conclusion they’re either good or bad. Many hiring managers don’t know how to assess soft skills or identify how to further nurture them. Because of this, they may eliminate viable candidates too soon. That’s why soft skills assessment tools can be so useful!

The best soft skills assessment tools in 2025

Now we know why integrating soft skills assessments into your talent acquisition strategy is so important, it’s time to choose from a list of skills assessment tools.

The list below includes our picks for 2025’s best testing software, and it’s far from random. We assessed the most popular products according to critical factors. Criteria included:

• Price: Whether there’s a functional free trial, affordable basic rates, or the possibility of costs spiraling as your deployment scales.
• Breadth: The range of soft skills each platform tests. For example, are there psychometric tests to delve deep into candidate personalities?
• Ease of use: Testing should be easy to pick up and use. We avoided tools with steep learning curves to focus on options suitable for novices.
• Extras: How do the soft skills assessment functions combine with hard skills testing or other recruitment features? Ideally, tests slot neatly into the talent pipeline as one stage among many.
• Effectiveness: Are the tests actually any good? Diversity and low price are no good if skills tests are superficial or poorly designed.

If you’re just looking for a side-by-side comparison, here’s a chart to help you map your options.

Tool	Best For
Toggl Hire	Delivering a great candidate experience while testing a wide range of soft and hard skills
iMocha	Eliminating cheating and ensuring honest test results
Bryq	Making data-driven hiring decisions to ensure a good cultural fit
Skillrobo	Quickly creating customized soft skills tests
Pymetrics	Gamifying your testing process
HighMatch	Finding the perfect psychological fit
Hire Success	Profiling candidates to suit your workforce
Mettl	Identifying leadership potential
Clevry	Enriching resumes with deeper candidate insights
JobArch	Screening resumes for soft skills potential

Toggl Hire

📌 Toggl Hire is best for delivering a great candidate experience while testing a wide range of soft and hard skills.

Toggl Hire is a full-cycle applicant tracking system that puts skills assessments first. Users benefit from a vast library of tests created by experts, not AI or your friend’s cousin’s wife who used to work in the field 15 years ago. You can test for critical thinking, communication skills, verbal reasoning, and attention to detail, among others.

Key assessment features:

• Fun tests on soft and hard skills are delivered straight to every candidate
• Customizable tests with templates for any situation
• Provides access to a huge library of over 19,000 questions
• Homework assignments to test in-depth before interviews
• Automated and personalized feedback to test takers ensures a good candidate experience

Pricing

• Free: $0/month. Includes one skills test and candidate data for 30 days.
• Starter: $199/mo. Unlimited skills tests and unlimited candidates.
• Premium: $349/mo. Unlimited skills tests, unlimited candidates, and unlimited job openings.

iMocha

📌 iMocha is best for eliminating cheating and ensuring honest test results.

Available in over 80 languages, iMocha offers soft skills tests for global workforces. AI-powered anti-cheating tools deliver clean results, while users can dive into a substantial library of soft and hard skill-focused tests.

Key assessment features:

• Testing library includes over 3,000 skills
• AI-based anti-cheating tools detect deception instantly
• AI-EnglishPro meets CEFR standards for English language proficiency
• Live Coding interviews make it easier to verify coding abilities

Pricing

• Basic: $400/month. Covers 600 candidate assessments per year. Includes all soft skills and coding assessments.
• Enterprise: Rates are available on request. There is no candidate limit, and users benefit from an advanced skills library.

Bryq

📌 Bryq is best for making data-driven hiring decisions to ensure a good cultural fit.

Bryq is a talent intelligence platform focused on obtaining objective candidate data. The platform’s testing library includes cognitive and soft skills needed to find the ideal cultural fit for every position.

Key assessment features:

• Fit scores on the 1-10 STEN scale allow comparisons between candidates
• Tests for cognitive and personality traits, along with role-related competencies
• Scenario-based testing in simulated office and retail environments
• Candidate feedback delivers insights about soft skills

Pricing

• Standard: $299/month. Includes full talent acquisition features.
• Advanced: Prices available on request. Adds talent management features.
• Enterprise: Prices available on request. Includes support for enterprise-level clients.

Skillrobo

📌 Skillrobo is best for quickly creating customized soft skills tests.

Skillrobo is a talent management platform that foregrounds simplicity and flexibility. Users can pick from 100s of pre-made tests or use a customization tool to create their own. The online environment makes taking tests enjoyable, while automated shortlisting saves time for recruiting teams.

Key assessment features:

• Testing library with sections for specialist roles
• Skills library includes 60-70 questions for different business sectors
• AI shortlisting automatically delivers candidate shortlists
• Customization tool lets you build tests for each position

Pricing

• Professional: $149/month. Features unlimited assessments, AI assistance, and candidate evaluation.

Pymetrics

📌 Pymetrics is best for gamifying your testing process.

Pymetrics is a game-based talent acquisition system that tests personality traits to understand candidate performance. This is not a full-scale ATS or anything like that. Instead, Pymetrics uses expertly designed games to assess decision-making, ethics, generosity, and other vital soft skills.

Key assessment features:

• 12 games testing different soft skills
• Dynamic performance monitoring to prevent cheating
• Designed by Harvard and MIT academics based on psychometric research

Pricing

Pymetrics is not a budget option. Costs start at $10,000 for access to all 12 games.

HighMatch

📌 HighMatch is best for finding the perfect psychological fit.

HighMatch is an assessment platform centered on finding long-term hires with the right mindset to succeed. Users can create personalized assessments informed by professional psychologists. Tests screen personality, cognitive traits, and hard skills. Results also feed into career development plans to build skills in the workplace.

Key assessment features:

• Tests for cognitive ability, personality traits, and technical skills
• Situational judgment tests assess workplace performance
• The mobile-first design suits modern applicants
• Intuitive dashboard with informative reporting functions
• ATS integrations ease life for HR teams

Pricing

HighMatch does not advertise prices online.

Hire Success

📌 Hire Success is best for profiling candidates to suit your workforce.

Hire Success is a skills assessment platform built around profiling and personality matching. Users can test candidates based on the personality traits of existing employees and test for soft skills like integrity and problem-solving. Tests also integrate with job postings, making it easy to pre-screen applicants at the top of the hiring funnel.

Key assessment features:

• Candidate profiling based on personality types in your current workforce
• Tests for emotional intelligence, adaptability, and more
• Custom test builder to fit assessments to roles

Pricing

• Free trial: Hire Success allows customers to try the talent suite free of charge for 14 days.
• Paid packages: Hire Success does not publish prices for paid packages. Customers can choose annual or pay-as-you-go solutions and can also cancel at any time.

Mettl

📌 Mettl is best for identifying leadership potential.

Mettl specializes in online competency tests to use during the hiring process. Mettl’s “scientifically developed” tests assess many soft skills, including logical reasoning, cognitive speed, and critical thinking. The test library also includes leadership assessments that consider decision-making, communication, and other properties of the perfect manager.

Here’s how it works. As you can see, it’s very focused on skills testing and doesn’t offer modern candidate pipelines or other full-cycle hiring features you need to effectively (and easily) integrate skills assessments into your hiring process.

Key assessment features:

• Behavioral, psychometric, technical, and aptitude tests for potential leaders
• Campus recruitment tools to test large cohorts of academic high-fliers
• Hackathons to identify coding talent
• One-click proctoring to detect cheating

Pricing

Mettl offers personalized plans for every client. The brand does not advertise set rates.

Clevry

📌 Clevry is best for enriching resumes with deeper candidate insights.

Clevry is an assessment platform that goes beyond traditional resumes to help you make better hiring decisions. Users can customize each recruitment task with personality questionnaires, situational scenarios, and aptitude tests. 46 different testable attributes create a detailed portrait of each applicant.

Key assessment features:

• Test candidates for 46 personality traits to know them better
• Machine learning algorithm matches test scores to your role requirements
• Combine 360-degree feedback with testing for deep insights
• Branded testing sites let clients own the assessment process
• Integrate testing with popular ATS platforms

Pricing

Clevry does not advertise monthly or annual rates. A 30-day trial is available.

JobArch

📌 JobArch is best for screening resumes for soft skills potential.

Created by Arca24, JobArch is an ATS with extensive soft skills testing capabilities. AI analysis parses resumes and detects role-related skills. Career pages personalize testing, allowing brands to shine in the jobs market. You can also set up screening tests for technical and soft skills, generating shortlists of the brightest candidates.

Key assessment features:

• Career pages to host tests and enhance the candidate experience
• Caters for six languages, giving employers global reach
• AI analysis mines resumes for skills
• Personality tests screen applicants and focus on potential stars
• The Zapier integration makes getting started easy

Pricing

• Growth: $33/month. Limited to three active jobs and 50 resumes per month.
• PRO Corporate: $91/month. Covers 10 active jobs and 100 resumes and adds extra talent management features.
• PRO Staffing: $158/month. 30 active roles, 100 resume unlocks, and add-ons like CRM to smooth the candidate experience.

7 soft skills you should test candidates for

As you start to compare and test different skills assessment tools, think about why you’re testing them in the first place — an exercise that will help you understand what kind of tool you need and help you assess the quality and types of tests they offer.

Remember, soft skills assessments focus on the skills needed to perform well at work. They’re the skills we need to fit into company cultures and thrive as team members. But which of these power skills should you be testing for? Here are seven in-demand skills to look for.

Communication skills

In an increasingly connected world, effective communication is more important than ever. Think about remote teams. Managers rarely see their team members but must issue instructions, support struggling colleagues, and chart progress using a bunch of tools.

Strong communication skills ensure smooth information flows between team members. Everyone knows their role and how to help each other achieve collective goals. Teams waste less time on long discussions, duplicated work, or disputes about miscommunication.

Leadership skills

Managing other people and leading by example is essential, especially for those in senior positions. Make sure your candidates can do both by evaluating leadership skills.

Skilled leaders create a positive working environment. They defuse tensions, keep employees focused on critical tasks, and act as a bridge between company management and the front line. When the time comes, their decision-making skills save time and maintain momentum, allowing everyone else to thrive.

Outstanding leaders inspire others with their self-awareness, confidence, and skills. We’ve all worked in environments without elite people management. It’s confusing, demotivating, and, ultimately, bad for productivity.

Problem-solving skills

Being a superstar employee is all about handling the problems thrown at you to find the best solution. Ensure your candidates are expert problem solvers who can think outside the box.

The rise of remote work makes problem-solving abilities super important. Managers trust team members to think spontaneously and apply creative approaches to daily tasks. Micro-managing staff isn’t an option when they are a continent away.

In the end, companies with better problem-solvers are more innovative and efficient. Solving workplace challenges is easier when everyone takes a creative approach, which feeds into a happier and more confident workforce.

Critical thinking

Critical thinking complements problem-solving by questioning standard approaches and encouraging innovation. Critical thinkers use elite cognitive ability to break down problems and find the right way to tackle them. They don’t rely on formulaic solutions or conventional wisdom.

Make sure candidates can understand and analyze problems critically. Challenge them with unseen tasks and discover original thinkers who can handle unexpected challenges.

Time management

Everyone’s always busy. However, the best employees can manage their time by prioritizing the tasks that matter to deliver what their business needs.

Time management skills are vital in an age of hybrid work. Managers can’t hand out schedules or visit team members’ desks. Employees must organize their days and set aside time for critical tasks.

Teamwork

No individual can do everything independently, so they must work well within a team. Whether as a team member, a leader, or a manager, make sure your candidates work well with others and aren’t afraid to get stuck in!

Teamwork is hard to assess before you hire. Everyone has met colleagues who look great on paper but aren’t keen on collaboration. Avoid situations like that by assessing interpersonal skills and workshopping real-life teamwork.

Active listening

Active listening is a natural counterpart to communication skills in an employee’s skill set. In fact, it’s like a mirror image of writing or speaking clearly.

Active listeners don’t just pay attention to what colleagues say. They listen for how they say it and why. That way, team members can pick up on emotional or non-verbal signals. They can ask insightful questions and learn more about supporting colleagues during stressful periods.

Different methods for assessing soft skills

Assessing a candidate’s soft skills is much harder than most people realize, even with the right tool. After all, how do you assess the soft skills of people you’ve never met?

Objective measurement is difficult, but we can still observe and assess soft skills with the right recruitment assessment tools. Interviews, job simulations or role-playing exercises, and soft skills tests all play a role. Other methods, such as self-assessments and 360 feedback, can be valuable tools for validating a candidate’s strengths and weaknesses.

This might seem slightly vague, so let’s visualize how soft skills assessment tools fit into the hiring pipeline to find the best candidates. Here’s what the process looks like at Toggl Hire. 👇

Sounds great, right? Sure, but it all hinges on using a reliable soft skills assessment platform. That way, you don’t need to scribe every question or agonize over what to include.

The third-party soft skills assessment tools we’ll review below offer pre-built soft skills tests for hiring. Provided you choose wisely, you can build tests in no time.

A quick word of caution, though. Relying on assessments alone won’t lead to a great hire. Before you pick a solution, here are some tips for gaining deeper insight into a candidate’s soft skills.

1. Use soft skills assessment tests near the start of the hiring process

Skills tests are an excellent way to start the hiring process as they assign a qualitative or quantitative value to how well someone performs on the job. Hiring managers use soft skills tests to quickly test and compare candidates — like an initial filter to narrow your options.

You can test necessary soft skills in isolation or combine them with hard skills assessments (something we recommend you do). That way, you can find out whether someone is good at product management, for example, and if they are a good communicator.

For the candidate, skills tests are fun and engaging and can be completed at a convenient time. For recruiters, they give you real insight into how an individual operates. You can also test multiple candidates at once to save time. 

2. Add a personality test to the mix

Personality traits are character features that people inherit through genetics or develop through their life experiences. People can hone their soft skills, but personality traits are more or less a permanent part of someone’s character.

Traits like honesty and integrity are essential for roles with a lot of responsibility, like many medical and legal professionals, but less critical for others. For example, when hiring managers on a fast-track path, it could be essential to identify traits common to career success, such as motivation and loyalty.

Various personality tests evaluate someone’s personality traits, including:

• 16Personalities
• Big Five personality test
• SAPA personality test

3. Dig deep into interpersonal skills in an interview

A hiring manager can learn a lot through conversation and reading body language. For example, they can quickly assess how well the candidate communicates. For other soft skills, behavioral interview questions will give critical insights into how they respond in certain situations.

Behavioral questions give you a better idea of how candidates think. For example:

• Tell me about a conflict you had in one of your previous positions. How did you communicate your ideas? (communication skills, conflict resolution)
• Tell me about a time when you took the lead in your team. What was the issue, and how did your team react? (leadership skills, problem-solving)
• Tell me about a situation where you found someone breaking the rules at work. How did you handle it? (work ethics)

4. Ask hypothetical questions

Another popular way to test soft skills is by asking interview questions that put job candidates in a hypothetical situation. Here are some examples of situational questions:

• Your manager gives you a massive project with a very tight deadline. How do you manage this workload, and still meet the deadline?
• You’re a manager, and there is a conflict between two employees. The team members ask you to resolve the situation. How do you approach it?
• You’re working on a project for an important client, but your co-worker is extremely difficult to work with. How do you meet your goals and handle your problematic colleague?

This form of soft skills measurement asks about situations the candidate may have already experienced. Situational questions try to understand how they would react to different problems and challenges candidates might face in their new role.

5. Conduct real-life exercises (role-play)

Taking hypothetical questions one step further, you might assess a candidate’s soft skills by simulating real-life job scenarios. There are two main ways to do this: through role-playing or trial projects, where candidates work with others to achieve an objective. 

Through job simulation, you can assess soft skills to learn:

• How they manage their time
• How they communicate
• How they solve problems and use critical thinking
• How they take initiative and lead
• How good their attention to detail is
• How they negotiate and handle conflicts (if they arise)

6. Encourage self-assessment

A different approach is allowing candidates to independently assess their soft skills. That way, you can compare how they see themselves with the information you observe.

Specialized self-assessment tools like 360-degree feedback are not ideal for pre-employment assessments. However, they are excellent tools for assessing soft skills in existing employees and managing skills development.

In the 360-degree feedback methodology, hiring managers collect feedback from employees and those who interact with them most often to paint a realistic picture of their soft skills. You may be able to work this into recruitment with questionnaires or phone calls, but simpler methods are probably better.

Best practices for using soft skills assessments to make hiring decisions

The second common question follows naturally. How can we use soft skills assessments to work around these challenges?

Toggl Hire has been testing skills for a long time. Our experts have a pretty good idea about when and how to use soft skills tests to find standout candidates. Here are some tips to extract the most value from your assessments.

Align assessments with job roles

Assessments should always test soft skills related to the role in question. Some roles don’t need elite conflict resolution or logical reasoning skills, but some do.

Identify critical soft skills when creating job descriptions and use them to customize the assessment process. Ask stakeholders in the department where the new hire will work. They may have great insights about must-have personality traits.

Combine skills tests with other evaluation methods

Next up, you should always integrate soft skills assessments with other selection filters. For example, you can use personality tests to shortlist interview candidates. Interviews can go deep on situational questions and verify the results of the soft skills test.

We also recommend balancing soft and hard skills tests. Aim for candidate profiles that blend technical evaluations and personality insights.

Ensure fairness and objectivity

Thirdly, as we mentioned earlier, it’s vital to reduce bias in the hiring process. This matters when testing soft skills, as interpreting test results always involves a degree of subjectivity. Bias can creep in if we aren’t careful.

Solutions include using standardized tests for all candidates and objectively assessing results on a single interface, one of the great benefits of testing platforms.

When it comes to hiring panels, diversity is king. Try to staff panels with many different perspectives to avoid groupthink or lapses into bias.

Provide feedback to candidates

We also recommend providing candidates with genuinely useful feedback after taking soft skills tests. Expertly designed tests deliver interesting data about candidate strengths and weaknesses, and most applicants value follow-up messages detailing these findings.

Feedback is essential as it makes the candidate experience more engaging and valuable. Candidates who feel positive about your brand tend to tell others and stay active in your talent pool.

Regularly update assessment tools

Finally, take a dynamic approach to how you test soft skills. Research what recruitment experts consider the most important skills and monitor skills gaps inside your organization. If possible, your testing should lead the pack and anticipate future needs.

Of course, tests should be up-to-date and expertly crafted. At Toggl Hire, we regularly update every test to ensure relevancy. If candidates detect misleading or inaccurate questions, we amend tests to maintain their accuracy.

Create a soft skills assessment test for free

Toggl Hire is one of the leading talent assessment platforms on the market. Our tools are especially well-suited to testing soft skills for several reasons:

• Quality: Psychological and management experts with decades of experience craft our tests. We update tests regularly and audit assessments to ensure consistently high quality.
• Flexibility: Users can explore our huge library of curated tests or use templates to customize assessments. Alternatively, mix and match to create the perfect blend for every role.
• Ease of use: The simple interface makes managing assessments simple. Even better, Toggl Hire is a full-scale ATS, so you can slot soft skills assessments into the overall hiring process. Our candidate evaluation tool also makes comparisons easy, considering every critical skill.
• Affordability: Users can explore basic functions with a free trial and upgrade to affordable packages depending on their needs. Businesses also save money by combining ATS and testing functions instead of purchasing separate solutions.

Discover a new way to find the brightest talent. Start testing soft skills by signing up for a free Toggl Hire account today.