Welcome to this comprehensive guide of Mercer | Mettl’s online assessments platform. The objective of this guide is to make you well acquainted with the capabilities of the platform for hiring. You can start from the very beginning or go through the table of contents and head over to the topic that interests you the most.

You can personalize your account by navigating to: Account Settings>Details

You can customize the appearance of the test window starting with your company logo in the Test Window Customisation section. To enable premium customization options like custom favicon, test background, theme, custom test taker support numbers, please contact your account manager.

You may also add an explicit consent statement to take consent from your test-takers whenever any personal information is being collected. The consent statement should clearly convey the following:

• The purpose of collecting the personal information
• Mention the entities/organizations who require this information
• Duration of storing this information

This is a mandatory step for our GDPR compliant customers. Click here to read more.

Competencies are a combination of measurable skills, knowledge, and behavior that are required to do different kinds of activities. They are the building blocks of assessments and can be broadly categorized into 4 types,

An assessment is created using a combination of competencies that the test is looking to measure and can be customized based on this. Here are guides that will help you understand each of the following competencies further,

You can either choose to get a test built according to your organizational competency framework or use a test from Mettl’s library of Ready to use tests.

We offer a plethora of pre-built tests for you to assess test takers of various job roles, industries, and experience levels. Depending on the test, it may contain a combination of different test types like Psychometric, Cognitive, Domain, and Technical. It is as simple as navigating to the pre-built test library and choosing the test that fits your purpose.

To read more about how to add pre-built tests to your account, click here.

If our pre-built tests are not able to fulfill your requirements, you can create your very own custom-tailored tests using our pre-built question banks and upload your own questions as well.

Irrespective of the type of questions that you include in your test, there are 3 types of tests:

• Timed Assessment: A test that has to be completed in one sitting. Once submitted, the test taker can’t revisit the test.
• Deadline Based Assessment: A test in which the progress can be saved and the test taker can revisit the test any number of times before the submission date and time.
• Practice Session: A test that contains no test duration and marking scheme. The test taker can save the session and revisit it any number of times.

We also support many languages in which the test’s system labels and buttons will be displayed. Note: The language of the questions won’t be automatically translated to the selected language.

To learn how to create your own tests you can read this article.

Before creating your questions, it is important to plan how you will be storing them for easy access. The hierarchy is a tree structure comprising of:

• Groups and sub-groups (Branches)
• Topics (Leaves)

All questions need to be associated with a Topic. Furthermore, questions need to be assigned one of three difficulty levels – Easy, Medium or Difficult.

Mettl supports many types of questions as shown in the table below.

While most questions support automatic evaluation – i.e. you can provide the correct answer or the scoring logic at the time of question creation, some questions like the Upload type, Diagram type, Audio/Video Recording question are manual evaluation based.

• RStudio Questions
• Mean Stack Questions
• Audio Questions
• Video Questions

Further Readings:

• All about our Coding Simulators
• Code Complexity in Code Snippet Questions

Questions can be added one by one through the platform through Mettl’s WYSIWYG editor, in bulk using our Excel templates. Please refer to the support articles linked to each of the question types above.

After you have created your test, the next step is to share it with the test takers You can individually invite test takers to attempt a test or in batches by creating test taker groups.

Test taker groups are groups of test takers whose details can be mass uploaded onto the platform. These could be groups of test takers applying for different roles. Once uploaded, any test on the platform can be shared with one or multiple groups. This way, you won’t have to individually upload the details of all the test takers every time you schedule a test.

Here is an article on how you can invite test takers.

The access to a test link can be public or private.

• Private: If you want a specific group only to attempt the test, Private Access can be used to share invitation emails. After clicking on the start test button in the received email, the test takers can start the test.
• Public: If you don’t want to restrict access and let any test taker attempt the test, you can manually broadcast the test link with a medium of your choice.

To successfully conduct a credible hiring assessment, it is imperative to ensure that test takers don’t cheat. While sharing a test link with test takers, you can enable and configure various test link settings, including anti-cheating features such as:

• AI auto-proctoring: This monitors the test takers’ behavior and actions via their webcam and microphone for any suspicious activities like:
  • the test taker not present; looking away from the screen; covering their face.
  • additional person in the frame
  • the test taker using a mobile phone
• Human-led Proctoring: A human invigilator can monitor multiple test takers in real-time, wherein the invigilator can communicate with the test taker by sending text messages, and pause and end their test as required. This is supplementary to the above mentioned AI auto-proctoring and acts as an additional layer of security.
• Mettl Secure Browser (MSB): A custom browser that temporarily locks the computer to prevent unauthorized resources being used during a test by controlling access to system functions, websites, and applications. It is recommended that the test takers install the browser before the test.
• Browsing tolerance: This keeps track of the number of times a test taker navigates away from the test window, wherein a warning is displayed to them each time they do so.

A combination of these anti-cheating test link settings can be used according to the test’s stakes. If anti-cheating settings are enabled, in the reports section, you can filter test takers based on the credibility index. The Test Taker Credibility Index helps identify a test taker who resorted to some means of cheating while attempting a test. Test takers with a low credibility index have a higher likelihood of having cheated and vice-versa. The index has values – High, Medium, and Low.

To learn in-depth about anti-cheating test link settings, kindly refer to this article.

Test takers could be taking a test in one of the following ways. The test taker’s experience for each of the tests will be different from one another along with the system requirements. Click on each of the following to understand the test taker experience.

• A non-proctored test
• A proctored test
• A test on Mettl’s Secure browser
• A proctored test on Mettl’s Secure browser

You can also share these pages with the test takers depending on the test type they are attempting to be used as a guide for them. In all of the cases, the test taker can access their test through one of the following ways,

1. Click on the start test button received in their email
2. Enter the test link received in a browser
3. Enter the test invitation key on test.mettl.com

The responses of a test taker get periodically synced with our servers. In case a test taker gets disconnected from the server due to power-failure/ internet malfunction, a message is displayed to the test taker stating the connection failure. During this time, the timer of the test gets paused and the test window tries to re-establish connection with the servers. After this there can be 3 scenarios:

• If the test taker doesn’t close the test window and is able to re-establish the connection with the servers within 30 minutes from the connection failure message, they can resume the test from where the test last got synced with servers.
• If the test taker closes the window but is able to connect to the internet and re-opens the test within 30 minutes from the connection failure message, they will have to wait for 7-8 minutes for the test to resume from where the test last got synced with servers. Note-If test taker authorization is enabled, the test taker will have to resubmit photo proofs and get re-authorized by the proctor.
• If the test taker is unable to establish a connection with the servers within 30 minutes from the connection failure message, their test will be expired.
  Here is an article that will guide you on how to resume a test in this scenario.

After test taker complete and submit their test, you can view all the reports on this page. To see the reports of a specific test, click on the Test Takers button located on the tile of that test in the Examine dashboard. The number of reports available at that moment is indicated while hovering the mouse over the button itself.

You can filter and search for reports based on:

• Test Taker’s name or email address.
• Test Taker’s Performance based on overall or section-wise score
• Credibility Index
• Date range of when the test was attempted

You can view the individual HTML reports, or download selected/all PDF versions of them to view offline. You can also download a combined excel report of selected/all test-takers, which will contain information like:

• Section-wise summary of the test.
• Registration field details of the test takers and test related details.
• Skill/topic wise analysis of each test takers.

Along with the reports of the test takers who have completed the test, you will also be able to view the status of all other privately invited test-takers who are currently taking the test (In Progress) or are Yet to Start.

What can be done using Mettl Examine APIs based on the REST framework:

The API consumer may:

• Create a new assessment
• Fetch details of assessments, schedules from their Mettl account and show on their portal
• Allow test takers to view available tests, start and take test from their portal
• Fetch information about test taker’s test states – started, active, idle, expired, complete and fetch results & reports of tests taken by test takers
• Create a schedule for a particular Assessment (Get notifications on test start, end, expired-resume, result completion events asynchronously
• Delete the test details/results for a test taker for completed/expired tests

What cannot be done using Mettl APIs and need to be done on Mettl website:

• Question creation,
• Test taker management and test taker registration field management
• Taking a test (i.e. test takers will attempt the test on Mettl window only, however, they can choose and start test from client’s portal)

Here are link to:

• Documentation
• FAQs
• Try out our APIs
• SDKs (Available in C#, JavaScript, PHP, Python)

BTo remove the hassle of remembering multiple credentials or the cumbersome process of entering endless string of registration fields to access assessments, Mettl supports smooth and quick integration between your system and Mettl’s assessment engine using Service Provider(SP)-initiated SSO with SAML. SSO mitigates compliance and security risks by giving control over user authentication:

• It lets a user login once and gain access to Mettl Account without being prompted to login again. SSO also enables the application to share information about users. This is both convenient and secure practice for the client.
• Test takers too, do not need to remember multiple credentials. A seamless transition between applications. Redirect test takers from your account directly on Mettl’s platform, enhancing the test taking experience.

To read more, click here.

To collaborate with your colleagues on Mettl, navigate to: Account settings> Account> Global Settings> User & Roles

Click on Manage Roles to create ‘Roles’ which are a collection of permissions that can be assigned to your colleagues (view/edit/delete) depending on the level of access required.

In each of these roles, you may choose to allow create, edit, share, delete related permissions:

• My Tests section – Assessments and Test Links
• My Questions – Questions, Groups, Topics
• Test Taker Banks – Bulk uploading a list of test takers
• Analytics/Reports
• Proctoring
• Global Settings Permissions – Adding other users, Registration Fields

After creating the Roles that you require, you may return to this section and click on Add User and enter the first name, email ID and the Role of each of your colleagues.

Clicking on Invite triggers an account activation email from admin@mettl.com to the mentioned email IDs with instructions to activate and login.

Account-Hierarchy lets you create sub-accounts/teams within your account for the various set of users.

This has been designed for the privacy of content between multiple teams within an organization – where X set of users would not be able to see the content or assessments of Y set of users within the same account.

Read more:

• How is a child account created?
• Account Relationship and rights
• Sharing assessments within Teams