Is it even possible to measure soft skills with technology?

Yes. Using advanced data modelling and a proprietary dataset built specifically for soft skills measurement, HiringBranch has made it possible to assess soft skills at scale, with results validated against real on-the-job performance outcomes.

What soft skills should I be measuring?

It depends on the roles you're hiring for. Effective skills taxonomies need to be customized to each organization. If you don't already have a defined skills list per role, an assessment can show you what soft skills your top performers actually share — and those can be built into a custom HiringBranch assessment. For common frontline roles, HiringBranch also has data on the soft skills that predict performance most reliably. Check our latest performance report for the top skills needed for customer service and sales: https://www.hiringbranch.com/resources/reports/skill-based-hiring

How is measuring soft skills different from a psychometric or behavioural test?

Psychometric tests measure cognitive ability and personality traits, but they have real limitations. They're rarely job-specific, which means no single test reliably predicts post-hire performance on its own. Using them well requires specialist training, and they're prone to bias from cultural differences, language barriers, and unfamiliarity with testing formats. AI-powered soft skills assessments work differently. Candidates respond to real-world, role-specific scenarios, and the results are scored against validated performance data. That's how hiring teams can identify, with 98% accuracy, which candidates will perform well before a single interview.

What happens if candidates self-report their own skills?

Self-reported skills are common, but they're unvalidated, and that's the problem. What a candidate believes about their own abilities may not match how they actually perform on the job. Building a workforce on validated skills, not self-assessments, is how you reduce hiring risk and improve quality of hire.

Can soft skills be tied to on-the-job performance?

Yes, and they should be. HiringBranch ties every assessment directly to the KPIs that matter to your organization, so the skills you're screening for are the same ones driving performance after hire.

Can I connect soft skill data to my ATS?

Yes. HiringBranch integrates with over 150 HR and ATS systems, including native integrations with Workday, Team Tailor, and more.

RESPONSIBLE AI

Explainable, defendable scoring you can count on

AI backed by evidence and explained with transparency, because black box LLM scoring isn’t interpretable for high quality hiring.

See how it works

Accurate scoring

Bias audited

Certified

Designed to be explainable, unlike an LLM.

“Strong in patient care” or “weak in critical thinking” is not good enough to explain why a candidate was hired or not.

HiringBranch’s proprietary taxonomy and automatic scoring maps candidate behaviour to specific actions observed during their assessment. This allows the AI to produce job-relevant feedback that can be easily explained.

EXPLAINABILITY SUMMARY

The candidate acknowledged and paraphrased well the customers' issues and offered suitable resolutions. Spoken fluency stayed steady with minor hesitation under pressure. Written follow-up was clear and correctly punctuated.

Observed skills

Paraphrase

Acknowledge

Spoken fluency

Positioning an offer

Writing

Transparent

Know whether a candidate performed successfully and what contributed to that performance.

Structured

Performance is shared in score reports, comparisons, and in plain-language for decision-making and defensibility.

Deterministic

Scoring yields the same result for the same candidate on a test repeat. No silent drift between runs.

EXPLAINABLE SCORING

Score breakdowns

Understand nuance between candidates with controlled, interpretable scoring.

Overall scores & percentiles

Overall scores are comprised of role-required skills and language proficiencies. Know where candidates sit against all candidates globally.

Competency comparisons

Competencies are a weighted collection of role-required skills and the degree to which they’re demonstrated.

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Language scores

Language scores are broken into speaking, writing, listening and reading demonstrating comprehension and communication fluency.

Observed skills

Observed skills quantifies how often a skill was demonstrated compared to what the role requires.

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How explainability works

Scoring is controlled and interpretable end-to-end, from the moment a candidate speaks to the moment a recruiter opens the report.

Scored in real time

Scoring happens during the assessment, against the role’s required sub-skills.

Explained instantly

Explainability summaries are generated the moment the assessment ends.

Stored for defensibility

Reports sit inside rich candidate profiles for review, comparison and retention.

From our science team to you

Report

Report: Accurately Measuring Skills Together

Ebook

eBook: CHRO Guide to Skills Verification

Report

Unbiased Hiring Decisions with HiringBranch AI

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the difference between inferred skills and verified skills?

An inferred skill is a guess based on proxy signals: a resume keyword, a job title, a confident answer in an unstructured interview, or a personality quiz result. A verified skill is one a candidate has actually demonstrated, in context, against a defined standard, with evidence attached to show how they demonstrated it. HiringBranch only verifies skills, never infers skills.

How does HiringBranch ‘define a global standard’ for scoring with percentiles?

With performance correlations. The HiringBranch Standard is a global benchmark for language, communication, interpersonal and cognitive skills. Every score is validated against real on-the-job performance outcomes. A percentile tells you exactly where a candidate stands in comparison to peers, not just whether they passed.

Is the global percentile for all assessments or individual assessments?

The global percentile is grouped by role and skill competency. You will find percentiles against a candidate’s overall score (compared to every other candidate globally who was assessed for the same role) and competency score (compared to every other candidate in any role who was assessed for that competency e.g. cognitive skills, speaking fluency, etc.).

What does "explainable AI scoring" mean in hiring?

It means every skill score a candidate receives comes with a clear, evidence-based explanation, not just a number. HiringBranch's explainability summary shows the specific parts of a candidate's role play response that drove their score, tied to a defined skill competency, so recruiters always know why a score is what it is.

Do candidates get explanations on their scores?

That is up to the employer. By default, explainability summaries and score breakdowns are built into the candidate profile your hiring team reviews only. Should an employer wish to share results with candidates, that is up to them.

How is HiringBranch's explainable scoring different from AI tools that use an LLM to judge candidates and then explain the result?

Most "explainable AI" in hiring today is a general-purpose LLM that renders a verdict, then a second AI layer bolted on to write a paragraph justifying it after the fact. HiringBranch's scoring is different: our proprietary and native AI is acoustic- and linguistics-based and purpose-built for skills measurement, so the score was never a black box to begin with. There's no LLM-as-a-judge to explain away, only structured, transparent, deterministic scoring against pre-defined skill competencies.

Does explainable scoring replace a recruiter's judgement?

No, it gives recruiters better information to use their judgement with. Explainability summaries turn a raw score into a plain-language report recruiters can review, compare across candidates, and retain for later, so hiring teams spend their time interviewing proven top candidates instead of guessing at what an AI score actually means.

Every hiring decision depends on accurate assessments

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