ShiftMate Assessment Studio · Built in South Africa

Contact-centre assessments
built around the work
agents actually do.

Measure behaviour, communication, voice, system ability and role readiness before candidates reach the interview stage.

Book a Demo Try a Candidate Assessment
The Assessment Imperative

CVs are a marketing document.
Interviews are a performance.

The two tools most employers rely on were designed in an era before we understood cognitive science, behavioural psychology, or predictive validity. They tell you what someone wants you to believe — not how they'll actually perform under real work conditions.

CVs tell you where, not how

A CV proves someone held a job — not that they were good at it, not that they'll thrive in yours, not that they won't leave in 90 days. Tenure and titles are lagging indicators dressed as forward signals.

Interviews reward articulateness

Skilled interviewers are rare. Most interviews are unstructured conversations that correlate weakly with job performance — and strongly with how well someone performs under low-stakes social pressure.

Assessments reveal what matters

Structured assessments measure the dimensions that actually predict performance: how someone responds to pressure, communicates under stress, processes new information, and adapts their behaviour — before you spend a rand on training.

South Africa's Hiring Paradox

The experience catch-22
that locks out millions

South Africa has one of the highest youth unemployment rates on earth. Not because the talent doesn't exist — but because the screening systems were never designed to find it.

No work history

Millions of South Africans are applying for their first real role. Their CVs are blank — not because they lack potential, but because no one gave them the first break.

Rejected at screening

Traditional hiring filters require demonstrable experience. Without it, candidates are screened out before a human ever reads their name — regardless of who they actually are.

Can't build experience

Without employment, there's no track record. Without a track record, there's no employment. The cycle is self-reinforcing, and it compounds with every passing year.

repeats indefinitely without intervention
What breaks the cycle
The employer reframe

You don't actually need experience.
You need evidence of capability.

Experience is a proxy — and a weak one. It tells you that someone did a job, not that they were good at it, not that they'll be good at yours, and not that they won't cost you more to retain than they produce.

Structured assessments give you something better: a direct measure of how someone thinks, communicates under pressure, responds to novelty, and handles the exact situations your role demands. That's predictive. A five-year tenure at a similar company isn't.

What our assessments surface

Potential that experience-based
screening would have discarded.

High resilience under pressure

Measured before they've ever felt your culture

Fast information processing

No training history required to evaluate this

Natural communication clarity

Reveals itself in how they structure responses, not what they've studied

Ethical instinct and composure

Surfaces immediately under scenario-based questioning

Giving a first-time candidate a fair shot isn't idealism. It's better hiring science — because the data we generate is a direct measure of job-relevant capability, not a proxy for it.

The Intelligence Layer

Every state of the assessment engine

Behind every candidate interaction, three scoring states run in sequence — each corresponding to a distinct evaluation process.

Tap a state to hear how it works

Processing

~2s

Average L1 question response time

Real-time

Scoring runs as responses are captured

0 humans

Involved in initial screening band

Assessment Science

We measure what
actually predicts performance

Every assessment we build is grounded in occupational psychology, predictive validity research, and real South African hiring outcome data. We don't ask candidates what they'd do. We put them in situations that reveal how they actually respond.

Behavioural dimensions — not personality types

We measure observable behaviours relevant to work performance, not pseudo-scientific personality categories.

Scenario-based questions — not self-report

Candidates respond to realistic situations drawn from the actual working environments they'll enter.

AI scoring — not human interpretation

Our models evaluate consistency, quality, and response patterns without interviewer bias or fatigue.

Outcomes-calibrated — not static weights

Scoring dimensions are recalibrated against actual employer feedback at 30, 60, and 90 days post-placement.

7

Behavioural Dimensions

Resilience, Emotional Reg., Compliance, Communication, Ethics, Orientation, Retention Fit

5

Scoring Signals

Intelligibility, Pacing, Presence, Structure, Naturalness — for every voice recording

6

Competency Dimensions

Communication, Problem-Solving, EQ, Professionalism, Motivation, Adaptability (SVI)

3

Validation Checkpoints

30, 60, and 90-day post-placement performance ratings fed back into scoring models

Assessment Architecture

Six layers. One verified candidate record.

Each layer builds on the last. Deploy just the first layer or stack the full journey — every layer delivers results in under 60 seconds, works on any mobile device, and requires zero candidate registration.

1

Eligibility & Suitability

AvailabilityLocationShift requirementsTransportBasic role requirementsCampaign constraints
2

Behavioural Intelligence

ResilienceEmotional regulationComplianceCustomer orientationTarget pressureCommunicationRetention fit
3

Voice & Communication

ClarityFluencyPacePronunciationListeningConfidenceProfessional tone
4

Skills & Systems

TypingData captureCRM navigationNote-takingReading comprehensionDigital fluency
5

Role Simulation

Outbound salesInbound serviceComplaintsCollectionsTechnical supportBack-office work
6

Readiness & Recommendations

Overall readinessRole recommendationRisk indicatorsTraining pathwayEmployer decision support
Layer 1

Behavioural Intelligence

“How someone thinks under pressure — before you ever meet them.”

Our flagship L1 Screener measures 7 core dimensions that predict real-world work performance: resilience under rejection, emotional regulation, compliance instinct, communication clarity, target pressure & ethics, customer orientation, and retention fit. CVs can't tell you any of this. One 30-minute assessment can.

Sectors

BPOHealthcareHospital AdminInsuranceFinServSales

What It Measures

49 adaptive questions across 7 dimensions
D7 Retention Fit as a hard attrition gate
Simultaneous 5-sector compatibility ranking
Pathway placement (Exceptional → Not Yet Ready)
Server-side scoring — results in under 60 seconds
SAQA, QCTO and Services SETA aligned
Try it Live

Hear what your voice reveals

Tap to Start

We'll walk you through it

Contact-Centre Campaign Types

Built for every contact-centre
campaign type

Every campaign type has its own knowledge layer, scoring weights, and role-specific simulation. Financial services and insurance are contact-centre campaign types — not separate sectors.

Most active

Inbound Customer Service

Full five-layer journey — suitability, CRM simulation, voice readiness, customer service knowledge, and structured interview. South Africa's highest-volume contact-centre campaign type.

Includes int'l voice

Outbound Sales

Sales aptitude, target pressure, and voice energy scored separately. International voice track (UK / USA) for cross-border campaigns. Custom weighting per client profile available.

Specialist track

Collections & Recoveries

Negotiation readiness, compliance awareness, and resilience under pressure weighted more heavily. Regulatory language and debt-collection conduct basics tested in the knowledge layer.

Digital focus

Technical Support

Digital literacy, logical troubleshooting, and system navigation scored alongside the core behavioural screener. CRM simulation uses a technical scenario variant.

BPO campaign types

Financial Services & Insurance

Financial services and insurance are contact-centre campaign types — not separate industries. Assessed using the same core framework with domain-specific knowledge layers for each.

Bespoke · 4–6 weeks

Your Campaign

We build custom question banks, scoring profiles, and validation studies for campaign types not yet in our standard suite. Tell us your hiring profile — we'll build the science.

Assessment Customisation

From screening anyone
to identifying exactly the right person

The same science-grade assessment engine — configured around your exact hiring profile. Universal work readiness, sector-calibrated screening, role-specific scoring, or a fully bespoke build from scratch.

01

Universal Screener

Any role · Any sector

Six behavioural dimensions weighted equally. Routes candidates across every sector simultaneously — ideal when you're hiring across multiple roles or building a talent pipeline without a fixed job profile.

ResilienceCommunicationComplianceEmotional Reg.Work EthicOrientation

SA Youth, general talent pipelines, multi-role hiring drives

Try it live
02

Industry-Calibrated

Sector-weighted

The same six dimensions, re-weighted for the specific demands of a sector. BPO candidates are scored harder on communication and composure. Healthcare candidates on compliance and patient empathy. Hospital admin on accuracy and professional conduct.

BPO-weightedHealthcare-weightedHospital Admin-weightedSector benchmarks

Contact centres, care facilities, hospital admin departments

See TalentForge
03

Role-Specific

Job-profile scoring

Dimension weights calibrated to a specific job function — not just a sector. Our outbound sales assessment adds a seventh dimension (Sales Orientation) and applies a hard ethics gate. A borderline candidate who's technically capable but ethically misaligned is automatically redirected.

Sales Orientation (D7)Hard ethics gate3-band outputResilience-heavy

Outbound telesales, enterprise sales, customer retention roles

Build a custom layer
04

Fully Bespoke

Built from scratch

We design the job task analysis, the question bank, the scoring dimensions, the cut scores, and the band logic — all grounded in your actual hiring profile and calibrated against your real performance outcomes after go-live.

Custom question bankCustom dimensionsPilot + validation studyOutcome recalibration

Any role. Any industry. Any hiring profile.

Start the conversation

Every configuration uses the same assessment infrastructure — the same candidate portal, scoring engine, and outcome tracking.
What changes is how we weight the dimensions, what questions we ask, and how we define the hiring bands.

Live Sample — See the Scoring Engine Work

Answer one question.
See the science behind it.

One scenario from our L1 behavioural screener. Select any answer — then see exactly how our scoring engine reads it and which dimension it signals.

ScenarioBehavioural Screener · L1

“A colleague hands you a project report seconds before a senior client presentation. You spot a significant factual error that could embarrass the company.”

What do you do?

Explore TalentForge
Get Started

Ready to hire on evidence,
not assumptions?

Whether you need a white-label portal or a custom-built screening suite designed for your specific contact-centre roles — we've done it. Let's talk about what you need.

SETA aligned · POPIA compliant · White-label ready · 4–6 week build