Summary
Vervoe’s anti-cheating feature set leads the market in candidate experience and transparency. Our considered approach finds the balance between authenticity and experience.
We understand interviews and assessments are inherently high stakes - candidates might give a fake reference, jazz up their job title, or outright lie about their job experience.
With Vervoe, candidates undertake skills based assessments or job simulations; requiring them to do a collection of tasks, that mimic the scenarios, challenges and tools used which are as close as possible to a real day-in-the-life of the job - closer to an audition than recalling previous experience, or storytelling which in itself promotes more authenticity from both employers and candidates.
Our Stance On Proctoring
Did you know it’s typical for other assessment providers to request webcam access to take photos periodically or record candidates throughout the assessment? Otherwise known as video proctoring.
It’s also industry standard to cycle questions for each test, limit the maximum number of times a question is given, or impose a time limit. We knew there was a better way than recording candidates resulting in high drop-off rates, while not actually proven to minimize cheating.
After analyzing feedback from customers, we found most importantly what they really wanted was to trust the result without having to view every candidate's assessment. That's how we came up with a unique feature set that isn't biased or invasive; and a way for customers to trust the result without compromising the candidate experience or being disadvantageous to the candidate.
Our Anti-Cheating Feature Set
We’ve taken a considered position, rather than just implementing a laundry list of features, aimed at finding a balance that would complement our product. This has led us to introduce the combination of -
- Simulations & Other Immersive Question Types
- Plagiarism
- Geolocation/Inconsistent Behavior
- Randomisation
- Visual Checks (Audio & Video Questions)
- Multiple attempt prevention
- Time-based questions and assessments
- Copy-paste detection (coming soon)
Vervoe-Specific Anti-Cheating Measures
We’re really proud to have created a product that serves both sides - employers and candidates - in the hiring process. We can confidently say we offer a solution that not only provides accurate information for the employer but is closely aligned with our mission to remove hiring bias and enable candidates to showcase their skills.
Immersive Questions & Simulations
Most of our questions are immersive. Imagine watching an Enterprise Sales Associate give a live pitch from a deck they’ve just helped create, or a Marketing Analyst pull game changing insights from data in a spreadsheet or a UX designer unmuddle and optimize your onboarding flow in under an hour.
Firstly, and most importantly, Vervoe tests skills, not knowledge. So the ability to ‘Google’ or ‘ChatGPT’ an answer should be limited by the nature of our assessments and simulations. It is true that some questions are multiple choice or knowledge based, but these are often followed up by questions to explain your reasoning in other formats. As we bring out more simulations and functionality; the need to ask text or multiple choice based knowledge based questions will continue to be reduced if not eliminated.
Vervoe can support deep simulations and immersive question types because we have AI grading and deep simulations. Our competitors do not have the proprietary AI so must resort to questions that can be easily graded; such as multiple choice or text based questions.
In the real world and context of work which is what the Vervoe platform simulates; using Google or other methods to research an answer (including asking questions of other stakeholders) is not only allowed but required.
Plagiarism
Plagiarism is not acceptable in the real world and context of work. Vervoe’s plagiarism detection allows customers to track candidates that have the same answer by comparing duplicate content to a question across the platform. If 2 or more answers are the same the plagiarism flag will be shown from the Select list & Candidate Report card.
Plagiarism detection works across languages. To activate the plagiarism detection setting customers must toggle it on via the question settings in Create.
Vervoe’s plagiarism feature works across web and mobile devices and cannot be circumvented like other inferior methods commonly used by competitors such as:
- Tab switching and tab detection (circumvented by using another device such as a mobile phone or secondary laptop)
- Copy/Pasting (circumvented by manually typing the answer)
- Mouse in window (circumvented by using another device such as a mobile phone or secondary laptop)
Geolocation
We use geolocation detection to determine if a candidate completes an assessment from multiple locations. If the locations and the timestamps are incompatible the candidate will be flagged for you to review. Our method ensures that genuine candidates that happen to start an assessment in one location and complete it in another location are not disadvantaged by this process.
Geolocation allows you to detect and flag potential cheating from candidates that have multiple logins in different city locations. The logins must occur within a 30-minute window and be for the same assessment. This anti-cheating feature is available to all plan types on Assessment Flow. The multiple locations flag will be visible from the select list and on the candidate report card.
The flag can also be dismissed from the candidate report card. What this means is that each candidate report card shows the locations in which the logins were detected. If there is a change in location you will be alerted with a flag like you can see in the demo. This enables you to trust that the candidate has not outsourced someone to complete the assessment on their behalf.
If the concern of getting others to take the assessment on the candidate’s behalf; if someone else logs into the candidate’s account a geolocation flag will alert the employer. Solutions like proctoring and snapshots are not good solutions because they only work if the camera is on (i.e. which candidates can turn off once they start), a third party could be helping them out of frame and this solution (proctoring/snapshots) does not work on mobile phones.
Standard Anti-Cheating Measures
Randomization
Randomization is available to all customers, across all assessments. In its simplest form, it allows you to mix up the questions in an assessment so each candidate receives a slightly different set of questions to answer. This minimizes the risk that information will be shared about the content between candidates. Randomization can be on a question or skill level and some question types like multiple choice even allow randomization within the question itself.
Randomization allows you to select the number of questions from each individual skill group that you wish to rotate. Skill groups can also be toggled off which means questions from that group won’t be subject to randomization. This removes the chance of a candidate posting your assessment online or sharing the assessment questions with other candidates.
Timers
We support custom timers for both questions and assessments. All due dates and time limits in-app are customizable. We recommend due dates as best practice; and that assessments should be submitted within four days from when a candidate receives the invitation. We don’t recommend setting time limits for the assessment unless it is relevant to the job, like customer service dealing with tickets or SLAs, as it accounts for connectivity issues, and a better candidate experience.
Visual Checks (Audio & Video Questions)
As you already know, Vervoe does not believe in this practice of video proctoring and we do not offer this capability as we respect each candidate's privacy. However we do support video and audio questions that give you a real-time look at who is responding to the questions in the assessment if potential cheating has been flagged.
It is also quite standard for other platforms to monitor if a candidate stays within their assessment window, which we do not do. When creating our anti-cheating features we believe we’ve struck the right balance between identifying candidates who are inauthentic vs. resourceful.
Hidden Answers & Multiple-Attempt Prevention
Answers are hidden. We keep the assessment answers hidden to protect the integrity of our tests. Multiple-attempt prevention. We detect if a candidate is trying to register for another attempt, and block them from doing so — one attempt per email address is all we allow.
Disable copy-paste (coming soon)
We will disable the ability to copy and paste text from the question screen, minimizing the risk of test questions being shared online.
Our Stance On Next Steps
Q: Vervoe has informed me of someone cheating on their assessment, now what?
A: How you handle the process is entirely up to you and your company. Vervoe will provide you with the information in-app.
Q: Will the anti-cheating flags and features affect candidate scores?
A: No, candidate scores are not affected by any of the anti-cheating features, Vervoe simply flags its occurrence. Anti-cheating flags also do not show up when sharing candidate cards and profiles.
Warning: While we employ anti-cheating measures to monitor a candidates' activities, we cannot say for certain that a candidate has cheated. These measures are there to flag potential concerns, but should not be used by themselves to disqualify candidates.