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 speed and accuracy of typing.

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

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 be also 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. 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 kind of content your candidate would be typing in the job role.

2. 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 really cuts the mustard when it comes to typing.

3. Selective Hiring

Selective Hiring assessment is data-entry specific, perfect for recruiters of entry-level data entry positions. It uses a number of 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.

4. Mettle

Over 4000 companies use assessment provider Mettl for their typing tests including Kronos, Michelin, and American Express. It’s a conventional test of accuracy and speed, so nothing revolutionary. They do, however, offer to make a custom test for your company; tailoring a typing test that will reflect the content your candidates will encounter.

5. ThriveMap

Ok so we’re biased but our assessments go beyond just a simple typing test. We create realistic job assessments which take candidates through a virtual “day in the life” of the job. This is used to test candidate behaviour, commitment as well as raw capabilities such as typing ability. Written communication and data entry skills often form part of our customized assessments. 

With ThriveMap you get the added benefit of testing skills within the context of the job. 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 speed or vice versa and you may want to give candidates a realistic picture of what the job is that they’re being asked to do. All of which you can do in ThriveMap.

In closing

That concludes our list of some of the best typing assessments to use when 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 used alongside a structured interview to assess someone’s full range of abilities.