Online typing assessments: The 5 best to use for hiring

You’re hiring for a role that requires excellent typing skills. It could be for data entry, note-taking, clerical work, translations, or transcriptions. Either way, testing someone’s ability to type quickly and accurately is best done via an online typing assessment.

We’ve compiled five of the best online typing assessments so you can find the lightning-fast typist your company needs right now.

What are online typing assessments?

Online typing assessments are used to measure your typing speed and accuracy.

A typing test assessment requires the applicant to type different types of text as quickly and accurately as possible for a pre-defined period. 

Scores can be formulated by combining objective measures such as average typing speed, keystrokes per minute, and typing accuracy.

Different roles may require different average speeds and accuracy. For example, a data entry role might only require 45 words per minute, whereas a legal secretary may need to be able to do 90. Typing Tests can also be used for practice to improve muscle memory and touch typing (typing without looking at the keyboard), which are needed to pass tougher tests.

The 5 best online typing assessments to use when hiring

If you need to know that your new hire can transcribe meeting minutes in minutes, not hours these typing assessments will let you know whether your new hire is the right type of person that can, well, type! 

1. ThriveMap pre-employment typing assessments

ThriveMap specialises in designing pre-hire assessments for high volume roles, such as contact centre staff and customer service teams.

ThriveMap’s typing assessments are designed by understanding the context of the role. For example, with typing, you may have a specific style of transcription that requires a different ability than general typing. You may decide that accuracy is more important than a ‘words per minute’ speed test or vice versa, and you may want to give candidates a realistic picture of the job they’re being asked to do.

You can do all of these in ThriveMap.

ThriveMap’s online typing assessments go beyond a simple typing test.

ThriveMap creates realistic job assessments that take candidates through a virtual “day in the life” of the job. This is used to test candidate behaviour, commitment, and cultural fit, as well as raw capabilities such as typing ability. Written communication and data entry skills often form part of the customised assessments, and they can be tailored to a specific work environment, such as typing tests for call centres.

2. Typist Test Pro

Typist Test Pro lets you create customized typing tests for your pre-employment and training needs in just a few easy steps. If you’re dealing primarily with foreign languages or numerical data, you can tailor the trial text to fit the content your candidate would be typing in the job role.

3. ISV Online

ISV Online is geared towards employers with a convenient percentile ranking system and a user-friendly display. All of this helps you, the recruiter, see who cuts the mustard when it comes to typing.

4. Selective Hiring

Selective Hiring assessment is data-entry specific, perfect for recruiters of entry-level data entry positions. It uses many factors to compile an overall score, including average keystrokes per minute (KSPM). Selective Hiring also boasts 20 different typing tests to reflect different subject areas for recruiters to choose from for their candidates.

5. Mettle

Over 4000 companies, including Kronos, Michelin, and American Express, use assessment provider Mettl for typing tests. It’s a conventional test of accuracy and speed. However, they offer to make a custom test for your company, tailoring a typing test that will reflect the content your candidates will encounter.

In closing

That concludes our list of some of the best online typing assessments for hiring. There are plenty of assessments out there, and with slight ergonomic differences, they will all allow you to rank candidates based on speed and accuracy of typing. 

But remember, typing assessments only show you one side of each candidate; they should either be used as part of a wider assessment or alongside a structured interview to assess someone’s full range of abilities.