# Candidate assessment for enterprise buyers: what AI models recommend, September 2026

Gane Index, September 2026 Edition. Asked as "pre-employment assessment platform" and as "skills testing tool for hiring", six framings each, to twelve models with search on, on behalf of an enterprise B2B company. Page: https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/talent/candidate-assessment/2026-09/enterprise

This is the permanent record of the September 2026 Edition, published September 17, 2026 and superseded since. The current standing: https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/talent/candidate-assessment/enterprise/index.md

**Standing:** SHL leads with 24% of first choices; verdict contested. 38 first choices across the direct, paraphrase, budget and scale prompts.

## First-choice share

| Rank | Product | Share | Negative rate | Labels |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | [SHL](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/shl/index.md) | 24% | 18% | 33 |
| 2 | [Criteria Corp](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/criteria-corp/index.md) | 11% | 20% | 30 |
| 3 | [iMocha](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/imocha/index.md) | 8% | 5% | 19 |
| 5 | [The Predictive Index](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/the-predictive-index/index.md) | 8% | 10% | 10 |
| 6 | [Harver](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/harver/index.md) | 5% | 8% | 24 |
| 7 | [TestGorilla](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/testgorilla/index.md) | 5% | 30% | 27 |
| 10 | [Mercer | Mettl](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/mercer-mettl/index.md) | 3% | 0% | 20 |
| 11 | [HireVue](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/hirevue/index.md) | 3% | 22% | 27 |
| 12 | [HackerRank](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/hackerrank/index.md) | 3% | 22% | 23 |
| 13 | [Testlify](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/testlify/index.md) | 3% | 9% | 11 |
| 14 | [Vervoe](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/vervoe/index.md) | 3% | 9% | 11 |
| 18 | [Codility](https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/vendors/codility/index.md) | 0% | 17% | 18 |

Rank is by share of first choices among all 73 products named; products with the same share are tied, and the order among them carries no meaning. The table lists those with at least 10 labels.

## Each model's first choice on the direct prompt

- Claude Haiku 4.5: HireVue; alternatives Harver, iMocha
- GPT-5.4 mini: SHL; alternatives Codility, Criteria Corp, HackerRank, HireVue
- Gemini 3.5 Flash: Criteria Corp; alternatives Caliper, CoderPad, Codility, HackerRank
- Perplexity Sonar: SHL; alternatives Codility, Harver, HireVue, TestGorilla
- Grok 4.20: SHL; alternatives Criteria Corp, TestGorilla
- Mistral Small: Harver; alternatives Scale, TestGorilla
- DeepSeek V4 Flash: SHL; alternatives Criteria Corp, HireVue, Mercer | Mettl
- Llama 4 Maverick: TestGorilla; alternatives AIHR, Testlify
- Qwen 3.7 Flash: Vervoe; alternatives Glider.ai, HireVue, Pymetrics, TestGorilla
- Kimi K2: Criteria Corp, SHL; alternatives HireVue, Mercer | Mettl, The Predictive Index
- GLM 4.7 FlashX: TestGorilla; alternatives Criteria Corp, HireVue, iMocha
- MiniMax M2.5: SHL, The Predictive Index; alternatives Criteria Corp, Harver, TestGorilla

## Sources the answers cite

65 of 72 answers came back with a source list, from 12 of 12 models. Sites named in the most answers:

- testlify.com: 40 answers, 67 citations
- bestrecruitingtools.com: 36 answers, 39 citations
- jobcannon.io: 25 answers, 34 citations
- bryq.com: 23 answers, 38 citations
- testgorilla.com: 22 answers, 29 citations
- aihr.com: 20 answers, 20 citations
- pin.com: 18 answers, 18 citations
- sovaassessment.com: 17 answers, 33 citations

Pages named in the most answers:

- https://bestrecruitingtools.com/blog/best-pre-employment-assessment-software-enterprise-2026 (34 answers)
- https://testlify.com/top-10-pre-hire-assessment-platforms-for-enterprises (28 answers)
- https://jobcannon.io/compare/best-pre-employment-assessments (22 answers)
- https://aihr.com/blog/top-pre-employment-assessment-tools (20 answers)
- https://bryq.com/blog/best-talent-assessment-platforms-2026 (20 answers)
- https://testlify.com/guide-to-choose-the-best-talent-assessment-software (19 answers)
- https://pin.com/blog/pre-employment-assessment-tools (14 answers)
- https://fuel50.com/blog/skills-assessment-platforms (13 answers)
- https://gartner.com/reviews/market/talent-assessment-software (12 answers)
- https://testgorilla.com/blog/pre-employment-assessment-tools (11 answers)

## Warned against

- SHL: 6 of 33 labels negative. "Enterprise-only, custom contracts with variable pricing" (Kimi K2, budget prompt)
- TestGorilla: 8 of 27 labels negative. "What to Avoid: ... TestGorilla | Credit-based pricing increases with headcount ... making it expensive at scale" (Kimi K2, paraphrase prompt)
- HireVue: 6 of 27 labels negative. "Even if a vendor has partially retreated from these features (as HireVue did), their presence in the product history signals weak psychometric governance." (Kimi K2, negative prompt)
- Criteria Corp: 6 of 30 labels negative. "these vendors are increasingly viewed as "expensive overkill" if a lighter, skills-first tool can achieve 90% of the predictive power" (Qwen 3.7 Flash, negative prompt)

## Record

- Method: https://www.gane.ai/index/hr/methodology
- License: CC BY 4.0. Cite as Gane Index, September 2026 Edition, www.gane.ai/index/hr.