Category
Interview/Assessment
Rating
4.7/5 (189 Reviews)
Availability
HQ
West Hollywood, United States
Pricing
Custom
Free tier
No
Best for
Also in
Capabilities
What is Criteria?
Criteria is a talent assessment platform combining cognitive, personality, emotional intelligence, and skills assessments with a structured AI interviewing product built on the same scientific scoring foundation, marketed as Talent Signal. Its interview product is explicitly built to fix the disconnect most hiring stacks have, where sourcing and screening are data-driven but the interview stage reverts to unstructured notes and gut feel, scoring every candidate against the same behaviorally anchored rubric. Your team configures the assessment and interview criteria directly; Effi Flo's role is the ATS integration that keeps the resulting Talent Signal data flowing automatically.
What are Criteria's key features?
Science-backed assessments across the whole person: Cognitive aptitude, personality, emotional intelligence, risk, and job-specific skills tests give your team a broader signal than a resume or a single interview - validated by I-O psychology rather than gut feel.
Built-in structured interview tools alongside assessments: Plan, organize, and run both asynchronous and live structured interviews from the same platform - keeping assessment and interview data in one place instead of two separate systems.
Scores your team doesn't need a PhD to interpret: Easy-to-read reports and analytics translate assessment science into actionable insight, useful when a hiring manager needs to act on results quickly without specialized psychometrics training.
Compare candidates against your own workforce baselines: Establish custom benchmarks using your current team's results - so a candidate's score is measured against what actually predicts success at your company, not a generic population average.
Connects to your existing ATS and HRIS: Effi Flo integrates Criteria with your applicant tracking and HR systems so assessment results flow into the candidate record your team already relies on, without a manual export step.
How do recruiting teams use Criteria?
- An enterprise TA team hiring for customer service, sales, or operations roles uses Criteria's cognitive, personality, and skills assessments to objectively screen a high-volume applicant pool before human review.
- A multi-desk staffing agency uses Criteria's assessments for client-facing evaluation - presenting objective candidate scoring alongside a shortlist to demonstrate rigor and reduce time a client spends re-screening submissions.
- An in-house TA team building a structured assessment program uses Criteria's Evolved Hiring methodology to align test selection with the role's actual performance predictors, rather than using generic off-the-shelf tests that aren't validated for the specific job type.
Who is Criteria best for?
- Organizations that need validated cognitive ability, personality, and aptitude testing backed by decades of industrial-organizational psychology research
- Teams hiring for roles where predictive validity on cognitive fit matters more than technical coding skill - sales, operations, customer-facing roles
- A fit when EEOC compliance documentation and strong analytical reporting are required alongside the assessment itself
What are Criteria's pros and cons?
Pros
- Scientifically validated assessments reduce discriminatory hiring practices and provide legal defensibility—important for staffing firms managing client compliance risk.
- Video interviewing (both asynchronous and live) with AI scoring replaces unstructured phone screens, cutting screening time and increasing consistency across candidates.
- Integrations with 20+ ATS and HRIS platforms via API mean assessment results flow directly into your existing workflow without manual data entry.
- Real-time dashboards and candidate comparison tools let hiring teams make faster, data-backed decisions without rework.
- Device-agnostic platform (desktop, tablet, mobile) with no app download requirement lowers candidate friction during screening.
Cons
- Pricing model not transparent on the website—you must contact sales to learn costs, making budgeting difficult for smaller recruiting teams.
- 12-month minimum contract commitment locks you in; shorter trial periods are not documented, so testing fit before full commitment is unclear.
- Designed for mid-market to enterprise organizations with 50+ employees; smaller recruiting agencies or solo practices may find limited resources or pricing tiers.
- Customization breadth is sacrificed for scientific rigor—if you need highly flexible, non-validated assessment design, other platforms may offer more flexibility.
What are people saying about Criteria?
Reviewers highlight "Streamlining Recruitment with Data-Driven Insights: A Comprehensive Review of Criteria". Others note "Assessment, if you want to scale quickly, with the right people". One common thread: "Please Make it so you can Export Scores Directly from Job".
Consolidated from 189 reviews across Capterra · Updated April 28, 2026
How does Criteria compare to alternatives?
| Feature | Criteria | Arctic Shores | Bryq | CodeSignal | HackerRank |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Category | Interview/Assessment | Interview/Assessment | Interview/Assessment | Interview/Assessment | Interview/Assessment |
| AI-first | |||||
| API | |||||
| MCP | |||||
| GDPR | |||||
| Best for | Agency, In-House | Agency, In-House | Agency, In-House | Agency, In-House | Agency, In-House |
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Frequently asked questions about Criteria
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