Talogy vs Sova vs Mercer Mettl: Platform Comparison

The operational reality: Why legacy platforms fail volume hiring

When you assess 2,000 contact centre applicants per year across separate tools for psychometric tests, video interviews, and assessment centre scheduling, administrative overhead can reach tens of hours weekly. Legacy per-candidate pricing models (often ranging from £75 to £150 per assessment) create budget ceilings. With recruitment technology budgets typically in the £28,000 to £35,000 range for mid-market enterprises, you can afford to assess only a fraction of your candidate pool, forcing CV screening for the majority.

This creates three operational failures. First, you perpetuate credential bias. Talented candidates from non-target universities never get assessed, filtered out by CV screening before skills evaluation begins. Second, you spend hours exporting CSV files from three separate portals, manually reconciling data, and updating your ATS candidate statuses one by one. Third, when your CFO asks why cost per hire exceeds industry benchmarks, you struggle to justify the expense.

Assessment fees vary widely depending on the type and complexity, from simple screening tools to elaborate simulations, with pricing models ranging from per-candidate charges to subscription-based unlimited testing. The assessment itself may be scientifically validated, but if budget limitations force you to use it selectively rather than universally, you introduce bias at the filtering stage that undermines the validity of your entire process.

Traditional assessment publishers built their business models around consultancy engagements and per-assessment licensing because they served low-volume executive hiring. When you apply that model to graduate schemes hiring 300 people or contact centres hiring 1,500 agents annually, the economics break. The platform that worked for assessing 50 senior leaders becomes prohibitively expensive when applied to volume hiring at scale.

Quick comparison: Top enterprise assessment platforms at a glance

Deep dive: Talogy (formerly PSI/SHL components)

Talogy rebranded from PSI Talent Management in March 2022 and represents the consolidation of 16 separate assessment companies including Cubiks, Caliper, JCA Global, Performance Assessment Network, Select International, and others. This creates both strength and complexity. The strength lies in access to over 500 market-leading talent assessments covering every psychometric need from personality questionnaires to situational judgment tests to cognitive ability batteries.

The complexity emerges from platform fragmentation. User interfaces across the Cubiks Online, PSI True Talent, Apollo, PSI Hub, Caliper Portal, and SelecTrak platforms were rebranded with Talogy logos, though whether they remain architecturally separate systems is not publicly documented. If you need a Cubiks personality assessment, a Caliper cognitive test, and a PSI situational judgment scenario, you may find yourself logging into different portals or coordinating with separate account managers.

Talogy's scientific foundation is unquestionable. Their 16pf Personality Assessment builds on over 70 years of psychometric research and measures 16 primary personality traits with documented validation studies. Talogy leverages psychometric assessments rigorously validated against job performance criteria, ensuring objective evaluation of candidate skills and cultural fit.

The challenge for volume hiring teams lies in operational execution. Talogy offers flexible pricing options for SMEs including pay-as-you-go and subscription-based payment models, but custom pricing is typical for their enterprise approach. When you assess hundreds or thousands of candidates annually at typical per-candidate rates, costs can exceed your entire recruitment technology budget, forcing you to limit who gets assessed.

Talogy excels when you need specific, standalone psychometric instruments backed by decades of validation research with budget flexibility for per-use licensing. They face challenges when you need a unified candidate journey combining tests, video interviews, and virtual assessment centres with automated ATS workflows.

Deep dive: Mercer Mettl

Mercer Mettl positions itself as a technical assessment powerhouse with the largest library of 100,000+ technical questions and advanced auto-graded coding simulators. Their online coding interview platform features embedded simulators and digital whiteboards, making them a natural choice for engineering and developer hiring at scale.

Beyond technical assessment, Mercer Mettl provides robust AI-based proctoring capabilities, addressing the challenge of remote assessment integrity. This matters for organisations conducting high-stakes assessments where identity verification and behaviour monitoring are essential compliance requirements. The pricing model operates on credits. Basic starter packages are available with customised pricing for larger volumes.

What sets Mercer Mettl apart is powerful, customisable technology combined with content expertise. For Indian market hiring and technical roles requiring coding assessments, the platform delivers comprehensive capabilities. For UK and European enterprise hiring focused on graduate schemes, early careers programmes, or customer-facing volume roles, the platform's technical focus and proctoring emphasis may not align with your candidate experience priorities and employer brand requirements.

The platform works best for technical skills verification where coding simulations and robust proctoring justify the complexity. It becomes less suitable for customer service, retail, or graduate programme hiring where psychometric assessment and candidate journey experience matter more than coding ability.

Deep dive: HireVue

HireVue built its business on video interviewing at scale with enterprise licensing models where starting points typically represent significant investment for mid-size organisations. Pricing scales with organisation size and hiring volume, with costs that may challenge recruitment technology budgets when you need comprehensive assessment capabilities beyond video interviews alone.

The platform's strength lies in asynchronous video interviewing, allowing candidates to record responses on their own schedule while hiring managers review submissions at their convenience. This eliminated the scheduling complexity of coordinating live interviews across time zones and dramatically increased interviewer efficiency.

However, HireVue faces ongoing scrutiny over its use of artificial intelligence in assessment decisions. In 2019, the Electronic Privacy Information Center filed a complaint with the Federal Trade Commission alleging that HireVue's use of AI to assess job candidates' video interviews constituted unfair and deceptive trade practices. Partly in response to criticism, HireVue announced that it had stopped using facial expressions as a factor its algorithms considered.

HireVue publicly stopped using facial analysis after backlash, and HireVue video assessments now analyse only the transcript of responses rather than facial or audio data. This addresses some concerns but creates new questions about transparency and validation methodology that your Legal team will scrutinise.

For recruitment operations managers evaluating platforms, HireVue presents a specific trade-off. You gain powerful video screening capabilities but inherit compliance risk around AI explainability. If you also need psychometric assessments, you must integrate HireVue with a separate test publisher, creating the tool sprawl problem that unified platforms solve.

Companies are switching from HireVue to unified platforms when they need to combine video interviews with validated psychometric assessments and virtual assessment centres without managing multiple vendor contracts and integration points.

Deep dive: Sova Assessment

Sova operate on a fundamentally different model by combining psychometric assessments, video interviews, and virtual assessment centres in a unified platform that eliminates tool fragmentation. Where traditional providers require you to log into separate portals for cognitive tests, personality questionnaires, video interviews, and assessment centre scheduling, Sova's platform delivers all assessment types through a single candidate journey with one login and one data flow into your ATS.

Sova's engagement framework starts with a baseline estimation and scales dynamically based on your actual hiring volume and candidate pool evaluation needs, ensuring you pay for delivered value rather than fixed per-candidate fees that create budget ceilings. Initial scoping establishes expectations around anticipated hiring volume, with the framework evolving based on realised hiring outcomes, candidate pool size, scope refinements, and integration complexity. This success-aligned model removes the artificial constraint that forces you to assess fewer candidates and rely on biased CV screening.

"I really appreciate how Sova's talent assessment platform has helped our organisation to streamline our recruitment process and identify the best candidates for our team. The platform's skills testing, psychometric testing, and video interviewing capabilities have been particularly useful" - faraz a on G2

The operational impact shows in customer data. When organisations adopt the unified platform approach, they report significant improvements in assessment completion rates by eliminating the need for candidates to log into separate systems. Customers using native ATS integration report substantial reductions in manual administration through automated candidate status updates and workflow triggers that eliminate manual data entry.

"Very easy to use system. Looks professional and feedback has shown a very good candidate experience. Provide a high level of security of data which is very important to my client" - Gillian M on G2

Sova covers leading standards including ISO 27001, CyberEssentials, GDPR, DPA, and CCPA to ensure protection of your candidate data and maintain legal defensibility for employment tribunals. Sova's assessments are designed by organisational psychologists and validated using peer-reviewed methodologies showing meaningful relationships with job performance outcomes.

"Integration of SuccessFactors with the SOVA has been 100% effective in targeting the right talent for hires" - Palak G. on G2

The platform includes cognitive ability tests, personality questionnaires, situational judgment scenarios, asynchronous video interviews, live video interviews through Microsoft Teams integration for Virtual Assessment Centres, scheduling coordination, and reporting dashboards that translate psychometric scores into actionable hiring manager insights. Everything flows through native ATS connectors for Workday, Greenhouse, SAP SuccessFactors, and other enterprise systems.

The model works best for UK and European enterprises running volume hiring (200+ hires annually) across early careers programmes, contact centres, retail operations, or professional services where you need to assess broadly rather than selectively. You gain the ability to evaluate all candidates on validated competencies rather than screening the majority by CV alone due to budget constraints.

To see how the unified platform approach works in your Workday or Greenhouse environment, book a platform demo with Sova's team or review Sova's pricing framework to understand how engagement scoping aligns with your hiring volume.

Critical decision criteria for Recruitment Ops Managers

Choosing between assessment platforms requires evaluating three operational factors that determine whether the platform scales with your hiring volume or creates new administrative bottlenecks.

Pricing models: Per-candidate costs vs. unlimited licensing

Traditional assessment publishers use varied pricing models, with costs depending on complexity and assessment type. While US-based sources indicate personality assessments range from $10 to $250 per candidate, UK-specific pricing data is less publicly available, so organizations should request detailed quotes from vendors to benchmark costs accurately. This creates a direct trade-off between fair skills-based assessment and budget management.

Consider the economics for a graduate programme hiring 300 people from 2,000 applicants. At typical per-candidate rates (£75 to £150), evaluating all 2,000 applicants can cost between £150,000 and £300,000. When recruitment technology budgets typically range from £28,000 to £35,000 for mid-market enterprises, you can afford to assess only a portion of your candidate pool, forcing you to pre-screen the remainder by CV criteria alone. This introduces credential bias that contradicts your diversity objectives and exposes you to indirect discrimination claims.

The per-candidate model creates three operational problems. First, you artificially narrow your assessment funnel to control costs rather than to identify talent. Second, you face budget uncertainty because application volumes fluctuate, and an unexpected surge in applications can exceed your assessment budget mid-campaign. Third, you spend administrative time managing credits, purchasing top-ups, and tracking usage against budget rather than focusing on hiring quality.

Talogy's pricing reflects this traditional model, with custom quotes based on expected usage and assessment types. Mercer Mettl operates on purchased credits that require periodic top-ups. HireVue's enterprise licensing represents significant upfront investment that scales with hiring volume in ways that can create budget uncertainty for growing organisations.

Unlimited candidate pricing removes this constraint by charging based on your organisational needs rather than candidate volumes. You assess all candidates using the same validated instruments, ensuring fair evaluation and legal defensibility. When application volumes surge by 40% because your employer brand improved or you launched a new programme, your assessment costs remain constant.

The unlimited model aligns vendor incentives with your objectives. Per-candidate pricing creates tension because you want to assess broadly to identify hidden talent, while the vendor profits when you assess narrowly. Unlimited pricing encourages comprehensive assessment because it drives better hiring outcomes without penalising you financially for evaluating more candidates.

Integration depth: API connections vs. native ATS workflows

Assessment platform integration ranges from manual CSV exports to native connectors that trigger automated workflows. The operational difference is substantial. Manual integration means you export candidate scores from the assessment portal, download a CSV file, reformat the data to match your ATS fields, and upload records individually or in batches. This creates recurring administrative overhead and introduces data entry errors.

API-based integration improves this by automatically pushing assessment scores into your ATS when candidates complete tests. However, generic APIs require your IT team to build and maintain the integration. Field mapping breaks when either platform updates their data structure. You open support tickets, wait for engineering resources, and manually update records while the integration is being fixed.

Native ATS connectors eliminate this friction by offering pre-built integrations maintained by the assessment vendor. When a candidate completes an assessment at 11pm on Sunday, the score automatically populates their ATS profile at 11:03pm. A workflow triggers at 11:05pm that advances candidates scoring above your threshold to the video interview stage and sends invitation emails. No human intervention required.

"It's an amazing way to review candidate applications and speed up the interviewing process. Allows us to sift through the candidates quickly, rate them and schedule them in for further assessments" - Verified User on G2

Ask potential vendors to demonstrate the integration in your actual ATS tenant rather than showing generic screenshots. Request a sandbox environment where you can configure the connector, map fields, and test workflows with dummy candidate data. Verify that the integration handles bulk updates, error handling, and field validation automatically rather than requiring manual intervention when issues arise.

Understanding how your ATS integration works determines whether your assessment platform saves or consumes administrative time. Legacy platforms built their products before cloud-based ATS systems existed, so integration was retrofitted rather than designed into the architecture. Modern platforms build native connectors as core functionality.

Compliance and defensibility: Avoiding the "black box" risk

When your Legal team asks whether your assessment process can withstand an employment tribunal or discrimination claim, they need three categories of evidence. First, they need proof that your assessments measure job-relevant competencies rather than arbitrary traits. Second, they need adverse impact analysis showing that your assessments do not disproportionately screen out protected groups. Third, they need documented validation studies demonstrating meaningful relationships between assessment scores and actual job performance.

HireVue faced scrutiny after complaints alleged their AI assessment systems constituted unfair trade practices, highlighting the compliance risk of "black box" algorithms where the methodology connecting input data to hiring recommendations remains opaque. HireVue's decision to stop using facial analysis addressed some concerns but illustrates how AI-based assessment creates regulatory scrutiny.

Defensible assessment platforms provide transparent methodology documentation. This shows exactly what competencies are measured, which questions contribute to each score, and how those competencies link to job analysis data for your specific roles. They conduct validation studies using established research methodologies to demonstrate that assessment scores show meaningful relationships with performance outcomes measured through supervisor ratings, productivity metrics, or retention data.

ISO 27001 certification demonstrates that the vendor maintains information security management systems protecting candidate data from breaches. GDPR compliance ensures that data processing, storage, and retention practices meet European privacy standards. Ongoing adverse impact monitoring analyses whether your assessment pass rates differ significantly by gender, ethnicity, age, or other protected characteristics, allowing you to identify and address potential bias before it becomes a tribunal case.

"SOVA provides candidates with an analytical and logical assessment that goes beyond what recruiters can judge from a CV alone. It also aids candidates in building their personality. The customer support is excellent, offering prompt assistance with technical issues" - Nagma S. on G2

Ask vendors for sample validation studies showing the research methodology used to establish assessment validity. Request example adverse impact reports demonstrating the statistical analysis and reporting format you will receive. Verify ISO 27001 certification dates and audit schedules to ensure compliance is current rather than expired.

Identifying hidden flaws in interview processes that drive attrition can be mitigated through validated assessment instruments that measure the competencies predicting success. Compliance is not a checkbox exercise but a fundamental operational requirement that protects your organisation from financial and reputational risk.

Verdict: Selecting the right tool for high-volume recruitment

Platform selection depends on your specific hiring context, volume, and operational constraints. Choose Talogy if you need specialised psychometric instruments backed by decades of validation research, have existing relationships with industrial-organisational psychology consultants who recommend specific Talogy assessments, and your hiring volume remains low enough (under 100 hires annually) that per-assessment licensing costs fit your budget.

Choose Mercer Mettl if you primarily hire software engineers, data scientists, or technical roles where coding assessments and auto-graded simulations drive hiring decisions, and your candidate experience priorities focus on assessment rigour rather than employer brand perception.

Choose Sova if you manage 200+ hires annually across graduate programmes, early careers schemes, contact centres, retail operations, or professional services. Sova delivers operational efficiency and legal defensibility alongside psychometric quality through its unified platform architecture, unlimited candidate pricing, and native ATS integration that transforms your team's capacity.

"All the elements of the assessment process and the results are stored in one easy to access place. This means when reviewing all candidates, you can see every element and compare to make sure you make the right choice with your hiring" - Cath H on G2

Avoid HireVue if your Legal team has concerns about AI explainability or if you need comprehensive psychometric assessment beyond video interviewing, as you will need to integrate multiple vendors to build a complete assessment solution.

The decision framework prioritises operational fit over feature lists. A platform with sophisticated psychometric instruments becomes irrelevant if budget constraints force you to use it selectively rather than universally. A platform with powerful AI video scoring creates compliance risk if you cannot explain the methodology to employment tribunals. A platform with attractive pricing loses value if integration complexity consumes the administrative time you intended to save.

Comparing platforms for graduate hiring requires evaluating pricing predictability, workflow automation, and compliance frameworks alongside assessment content quality. Book a demo with the Sova team to see the unified platform in action or view our engagement framework to understand how baseline scoping aligns with your hiring volume.

Frequently asked questions

How long does typical ATS integration take for enterprise assessment platforms?
Native connectors typically a few weeks for configuration and testing, while custom API integrations may require 4 to 8 weeks depending on IT resource availability and complexity. Sova's ATS integration documentation provides technical specifications for each connector.

What hidden costs should we watch for in per-candidate pricing models?
Overage fees when you exceed projected volumes, upgrade charges for advanced features, integration maintenance costs, and credit expiration policies that force purchasing more credits before using existing ones.

Can we run two platforms in parallel during migration?
Yes, running systems in parallel during migration lets you validate data flows and train teams before fully switching, reducing cutover risk.

How do platforms handle reasonable adjustments for disabled candidates?
Look for WCAG 2.2 accessibility compliance, extended time settings, screen reader compatibility, and alternative format options to meet Equality Act 2010 requirements.

What validation evidence do employment tribunals require?
Job analysis documentation linking assessments to role requirements, adverse impact analysis by protected characteristics, and validation studies showing meaningful relationships between scores and job performance.

Key terminology glossary

Adverse impact monitoring: Statistical analysis measuring whether assessment pass rates differ significantly across protected groups (gender, ethnicity, age), required to defend selection processes in discrimination claims.

Native ATS integration: Pre-built connectors maintained by the assessment vendor that automatically sync candidate data and trigger workflows without custom coding or IT involvement.

Per-candidate pricing: Licensing model charging a fixed fee for each candidate assessed, creating direct correlation between hiring volume and software costs, often with overage charges when exceeding projections.

Psychometric validation: Research process establishing that assessment scores demonstrate meaningful relationships with job performance outcomes through validation studies using supervisor ratings or productivity metrics.

Virtual Assessment Centre: Online simulation of traditional in-person assessment centres using video conferencing, digital whiteboards, and collaborative exercises to evaluate candidates on behavioural competencies remotely.