Time to Say Goodbye to Cheating in Online Tests!

Have you taken digital exams/tests at your school or in a competition and thought to yourself, “If only I got myself a cheatsheet, no one here would’ve noticed!”? or felt tempted to tap or wink at a neighbour for that one, singular answer that will give you an edge over many? Well, I have! But come technology, those days are numbered.

Some of you will be imagining CCTVs in exam halls and security-room-in-action-movie like invigilation rooms. You’re not too far from reality. Technology today is enabling exam admins, teachers, recruiters to see, hear and even smell (ok, exaggeration here) the exam candidate, sitting thousands of miles away. Mettl is empowering these exam admins, teachers and recruiters with technology to do the same with our Advanced Proctoring Feature.

Mettl Advanced Proctoring is a step up from our current Web and Image proctoring features. For those who aren’t familiar with our Web and Image proctoring – Web Proctor Feature defines a top limit for the number of times the candidate can navigate away from their test screen and also pops a warning or terminates the test depending on the admin set limit. Image Proctor feature activates the candidate’s webcam and takes random shots of the candidate in the duration of the test – these get appended in the automatically generated report. With the introduction of the Advanced Web and Advanced Image Proctoring Features, the test admin will be able to do all of the above AND get the live feed on the candidate’s progress on the test, live – With web-cam feed in case of Advanced Image Proctoring and a image free, candidate wise test progress.

With the Advanced Proctor feature, the test admin can see all the candidates in a grid view on the dashboard (See image below) and do all of the following:

• Can watch the live feed of the candidate
• Get live images of candidates updates every few seconds
• Chat with the candidate
• Make announcements
• See automatically generated red flags (Flagged by our SW depending on any suspicious behaviour)
• Pull up live feed of any candidate with history at any stage in the test
• Terminate any test from the dashboard
• View the candidate’s screen – live!

The Advanced Video Proctoring feature is doing away with manual invigilation requirements and is a blessing for high-stake tests like the CAT, GMAT, etc. and even off-site recruitment drives.

To sign up for a quick demo of this feature – Sign up here and say goodbye to cheating in online tests.

Read more about what The Times of India has to say – “How Mettl is Changing Online Examinations“

How Cognizant found the next CXO through B-school Contest (Infographic)

Cognizant Technology Solutions is a leading IT infrastructure and business consulting company. As part of its campus engagement exercise, one of its ideas was to come up with a contest that would test the skills of some B-school graduates on several parameters. The idea was simple – to promote their brand as well as hand-pick students to interact with their CXO team through a contest.

Mettl embraced this opportunity by creating a highly interactive online contest for Cognizant – view here. The first round of contest was launched in the July-August period. The contest was run across 27 business schools and had over 2,300 students participating in it from all over India, Dubai, Manila and Singapore. Candidates were tested using innovative simulation exercises, puzzles, cases and spreadsheet analysis coupled with psychometric analysis.

Take a look at the infographic below to know how we did it:

Online Contest for Campus Engagement

Cognizant was pleased with the volume of candidate engagement and the excitement it created amongst students and various campuses. On the candidate side, 82% of the candidates were very happy with the quality of online assessment software, while 87% felt quality of support was very efficient. The competitive spirit was kept alive with the Leaderboard feature which could be shared on social media. After the success of Cognizant’s CXO challenge, Mettl now hopes to power many more such online contests in this manner.

Want to enhance campus and employee engagement through innovative online contests? Mettl can deliver.

How to select the right Assessment Partner for MOOCs

Millions across the globe are enrolling for MOOCs facilitated by major players such as Coursera, edX and Udacity. India’s HRD ministry is also encouraging MOOCs to improveaccess of education to all corners of country with help from premier Indian institutes.

While MOOCs integrate concepts of instructional teaching along with e-learning for enhanced knowledge sharing, they’ve not yet started providing learners with credit score or assessment for a formal degree. However in the recent times this is also changing with institutes like Antioch University in the US providing learners with credit scores. Also, the rising demand for a formal degree from learners seeking credit scores through valid assessment has also nudged MOOCs provider to incorporate valid assessment programs.

The role of an online assessment partner who can help MOOCs conduct a smooth, cheating free examination is undisputed. Assessment will help both the student and the course instructor to establish the authenticity of the knowledge, skills gained from an online course. This ascertains equal opportunity for an online course student at par with a traditional university degree holder. The following checklist will help any online course provider decide how to choose the right online assessment platform:

1. Auto-assessment technology – An online assessment partner should be able to provide “environs” that is self sustained. Right from authoring a multi-competency assessment, automatic invigilation and easy content upload, everything should be in one plate.
2. Auto-Proctoring: To ensure that a learner does not simply Google his way to a certification, a good assessment partner should be able to provide an cheating proof environment. Photo ID verification, signatures, typing-styles, screen-sharing, webcams are known and tested ways to avoid cheating in exams. Whats more, it also helps to cut down cost of hiring a manual proctor. The use of a webcam and microphone enables learners to take exam at their home, while the camera does its work recording the associated screen activity. 
3. System Scalability: Scalability of an assessment software is critical for smooth functioning of the MOOC. For example, course on The Ancient Greeks – a relatively obscure topic may have around 2,000 tests per annum, while  a popular course like Computer Networking will amount to around 20,000 tests in the same time. The assessment platform should be able to scale seamlessly.
4. Service Levels: Network up-time is absolutely critical for business continuity. Interruption of tests and loss of data owing to electricity outages, software crash, server trouble etc. are absolutely off-limits. It always does well to look into the assessment partner’s system-reliability and backup plans for these tight spots.
5. Skill Simulators: Some learners have to be assessed on specialized skills such as Coding, Managerial acumen, Spoken language skills, Data/Spreadsheet/Accounting knowledge etc. A good assessment platform should be able to seal the gap between theory and practice. EdX recently introduced an artificial intelligence software to grade essays and short answers, made available free on the web. The same software will also give instant feedback and allow them to re-write the essay. “Students are telling us they learn much better with instant feedback” says says Anant Agarwal, president of edX.
6. Learner Engagement: Since MOOCs are entirely online, a great end-user experience is one that involves no downloads, no installations and smooth access to learning via any internet-enabled device (laptops, phones, tablets, etc.). Assessments should also integrate seamlessly into the online course rather than being conducted offline in separate exam centers.
7. Test Score and Analysis: Last but not the least a good online assessment partner should be able to provide a comprehensive assessment with proper analysis and insight of the score reports. The insights should be clear actionable results showing micro analysis like average time spent on a question to macro analysis like comparison of pass/fail rate among different batches.

The biggest pitfall of disorganized assessment is, of course, its impact on the brand of the MOOC as well as the university. A certificate from an institute is more a testimony to the institute, not the candidate. There exists a parallel line of reasoning that advises bypassing of grades, and let the course’s objectives be achieved through peer assessment and the student’s laurels. Assessment is becoming an all-important aspect of the Best Practices of Online Learning. It most certainly pays to map all of these factors, weigh their pros and cons against the MOOCs vision and take an informed decision about an online assessment partner.

About Mettl.com: Mettl is an online assessment platform where test administrator’s can easily author tests & conduct cheating free tests. Our powerful online proctoring technology provides a live video feed of all candidates taking the test to detect & prevent cheating effectively. This helps course providers save logistics costs & conduct authentic online exams.

How Capgemini saves 12 days in Hiring the right candidate

Business Need

Capgemini – a French multinational IT services company is one of the world’s largest consulting, outsourcing and professional services companies. Capgemini hires thousands of engineers every year and has mandatory skill assessments for hiring anyone upto the profile of a consultant (P3). They assess 40 different skills for all such job profiles.

Capgemini invested a lot of time, effort and allocated hefty hiring budgets for the same. However, due to lack of standardization in their hiring parameters the entire process was very inefficient. Also, the tests and assessments were conducted offline – which added to the burden of manual evaluation.

Results Delivered

Mettl’s online assessments turned out to be a game changer for Capgemini India team. They now conduct online tests every 21 minutes on an average, and have also eliminated need of interviews at L1 (first level). This has freed up time of expert interview panel who can now work on billable tasks. Till now they have conducted more than 42,000 assessments on Mettl.

Using a combination of Standardized Assessments,  Skill simulators & Question banks Capgemini has reduced the time to hire a candidate by 12.2 days. With a better online screening infrastructure, 39% of incoming candidates pass first round of assessments & 49% pass the final round – meaning a higher number of candidates who qualify online assessments end up getting the final selection offer.

How Mettl improved Capgemini’s Recruitment Process?

Capgemini used Mettl potently to improve their recruitment process. 

• Coding Simulator – using a browser based Code Evaluator, Capgemini could check technical skills (Java, .NET) of candidates in a hands-on manner rather than using multiple choice questions;
• Skill based Question Banks – using their own Question banks & Mettl’s expert-created questions, Capgemini could assess candidates on more than 40 key skills;
• Online Proctoring – using Webcam based tests & option to lock Test window, Capgemini could ensure fairness of the assessment tests without incurring major invigilation costs;
• Real time Test reporting – using real-time Online Reports & Analytics, Capgemini could take quick & effective hiring decisions to gauge the knowledge & skill of pre-hires;
• Scalability & Concurrency – using Mettl as a scalable, reliable Online Assessment SaaS with a high uptime Capgemini could conduct Walk-ins, Recruitment drives 24×7.

What’s Next?

As a Digital Evaluation Initiative for the future, Capgemini intends to use Mettl’s Voice Simulator to test Communication skills like language, speech, pronunciation; Test Preparation platform for virtualization of the Training Programs; Hands-on skill simulators to unravel top performers & conduct Skill Gap Assessments. Capgemini also plans to conduct Employee satisfaction surveys at exit, review, promotions stages for their Employees to keep track of Employee engagement. 

Want to improve recruitment process of your organization too? Start with a free trial of Mettl now.

Mettl’s Industry First – Spreadsheet Simulator

We, at Mettl, believe that the true calibre of an individual lies in his skills because knowledge is now easily accessible and to test your potential Data Expert’s Spreadsheet Skills, on-the-job, we bring to you, first of it’s kind – The Spreadsheet Simulator. The simulator is fully browser based, no system dependency and no prior software instalment needed, not even spreadsheet applications!

Skills like Data Management, Interpretation and Manipulation, Logical Thinking, deriving insights, application of relevant formulae in Spreadsheets, can be automatically tested. A recruiter would love individuals in certain job profiles to have spreadsheet skills –

• Business Consultants
• Investment Bankers
• Data Entry Personnel
• Accountants
• Business Intelligence Analysts
• Sales and Marketing folk

Since a majority of their time is spent with data.

Folk in every industry – healthcare, life sciences, retail, banking, manufacturing and even public sector are making informed strategic decisions, managing human capital more efficiently, improving customer service, optimizing manufacturing costs – making Data Experts indispensable. Even though many DBMS (DataBase Management Systems) have evolved in the last couple of decades, the spreadsheet is still irreplaceable and is the tool of choice in many applications.

The candidate is presented with a problem statement along with a data set and is expected to work at the spreadsheet to arrive to a solution. See the screenshot of candidate’s experience here –

Try out a Sample Test to experience the simulator yourself

The Code Project

Mettl Introduces – The Code Project Evaluator!

 

We at Mettl have always believed that application, rather than possession, of knowledge is much more important. And we have always imbibed this philosophy in designing innovative ‘hands-on’ assessments on the Mettl platform. The Case Study Simulator launched by Mettl earlier in the year is one such example. Let’s focus our attention on the IT industry. With a huge talent pool of software professionals, which only increases every year, it is becoming highly necessary for IT organizations to choose the right tools to assess and hire the right people.

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Typically, an IT hiring process involves a code snippet writing (a candidate might be asked to write a small piece of code) as a screening measure. Most of the online code snippet evaluator tools available can assess limited programming capabilities of a candidate. But what about the capability to work on real life software development projects? Which typically require designing a full-fledged application along with a problem solving and testing approach.

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Mettl’s Code Project Evaluator is the answer to that. This innovative breakthrough brings evaluation of programming skills closer to the actual work environment. It is an Integrated Development Environment (IDE) on the cloud which provides a secure & sandboxed environment working in a browser to build & design a complete application.

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Try out a Sample Test to experience the evaluator yourself

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A few reasons why this tool is a step in the right direction for assessing programming skills –

• Checks complete code solution rather than a limited part of an API
• Fills the gap between testing Programming skills and overall Application development
• Candidates can write their own test cases as required in an actual software development project
• With database connectivity available on demand, a candidate’s programming skills with underlying data storage can be easily evaluated
• Static code analysis to analyze quality of code written by candidate
• Being on the cloud, no set-up is required for development and testing environment. Both automated and manual evaluation option is available to assess the candidates. Currently, Java and C# languages along with MySQL and SQL Server databases are supported, with plans to add support for more languages and 3^rd party frameworks.

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Typical use cases of the tool include hiring of experienced software professionals and learning & development projects in enterprises. We believe that the Code Project evaluator will be a revelation in the IT hiring scenario with the kind of depth it provides in assessing a candidate’s software development capabilities.

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Try out a Sample Test to experience the evaluator yourself

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Cheers,

Mettl Team

Mettl Introduces – The Case Study Simulator!

“This was way too good a format for a competition. Moreover, it was a great experience to practice case study and guesstimate! A great refresher. Welcome move.”

ISB Student

Simulators have come a long way – from Code Development Environment Simulators, to Flight Simulators and even Zero Gravity Simulators! We, at Mettl, believe that in this age and time knowledge has become a commodity, open to all. Possessing skills to apply this knowledge is far more valuable than the possession of the knowledge itself. Most companies are employing the same philosophy in their hiring initiatives today.

Let’s take the example of B-School hiring. B-School students and alumni are very familiar with the case study hullaballoo at almost all of their job interviews. (For those who aren’t, it’s quite simple – The interviewer puts forward a real-life like business problem to be solved.  The interviewee, after careful analysis, asks follow-up questions to investigate the root cause of the issue and suggests business decisions to rectify the problem). Mettl Case Study Simulator is an innovative breakthrough which takes this process online. It assesses business acumen of candidates by evaluating their interaction with our system and grades them on their approach, assumptions, approximations and decision making abilities.

Try out a Sample Test to experience the simulator yourself

IIM-L conducted their Annual National Strategy Competition – Strategia’13 on Mettl Case Study Simulator Platform and here’s what they have to say.

Read More Testimonials –

“The Strategist event with the guesstimate and case study section has been a huge success in the campuses. We have had almost no technical glitch and the feedback from the students on the UI has been terrific. We are definitely keen to explore this further and take it to the next level in the next campus season. Thanks a lot team Mettyl for your support”.

-Ayshwarya Srinivasan, Talent Acquisition Leader, Cognizant

“Excellent is an understatement to describe my experience. Truly, one-of-a-kind competition combining simulation and case-study methodology. This competition will go a long way in redefining how management education is imparted in this country. “

-NMINS Student

 “what a format!!! Simply loved it!!! Never thought a test could be conducted with real life problems. Hats off to the person who envisioned such quiz and also, the one who designed the quiz. The answers to cases could have been backed by subjective comments also…Congrats for conducting a genuine and refreshing contest. “

-SPJIMR Student

Assessing Leadership Potential

The success of an organization is on a large part dependent upon its leaders. In order to be successful, organizations need to be aware of their best talents and how to hone these talents to create them into future leaders. Just because someone holds a leader’s position, doesn’t necessarily mean they should. One of the major challenges faced by organizations these days is how to evaluate/measure a person’s leadership potential/capability and selecting the right person for the job. Most of the times, the organization’s problem is not related to which competencies to measure but how to measure these competencies, using appropriate tools having a future oriented approach. Here in lies the benefits of using pre-employment screening tools which are a sound predictor of a person’s future behavior instead of past performance.

Research evidence over the past few years has highlighted the importance of using psychological assessments for leadership recruitment and development purposes to ensure quality of hires and to minimize hiring mistakes.  These assessments give an indication of whether the person demonstrates the skills required to be a leader and their potential to demonstrate competence in the role of a leader. It gives the organization an objective and consistent measure of an individual’s personality, attitudes and behavior and helps them improve productivity and lower employee turnover by screening out unsuitable applicants.

Mettl’s leadership assessment tool enables an organization to make a prediction of the person’s

• leadership style
• cognitive ability
•  motivators and
•  personality attributes, measured through several leadership competencies like decision making, problem solving, interpersonal skills, developing others, flexibility and so on.

It helps an organization determine whether a candidate will be a good fit for the organization and the role.

These assessments facilitate the organization in making a well informed, scientific selection decision by providing them with-

• An objective view of the person’s characteristics, traits which are essential for achieving high standards of performance;
• Strengths of the person and what an organization can benefit from;
• The areas of the person which need development.

This assessment can be the first step in helping organizations select the right people for leadership positions and identifying talents and the factors which might benefit or hamper the person’s growth in the organization. This assessment can help in identifying the right people for a leadership role and help individuals equip themselves better for a leadership position by making them aware of their personality, strengths and weaknesses.

Stressed at work? Find out why!!

You would have heard that stress can be both good and bad!

Stress in itself is not a negative thing.  It is just your body’s way of responding to any kind of change or demand. We are biologically inclined to experience stress, to cope with it and survive.

Some level of stress is good for us, as it keeps us motivated. This can happen only as long as it is viewed as being challenging and positive thus keeping us happy and productive. This is the good stress that acts as an incentive to get the job done, called eustress. Stress becomes distress when it occurs in amounts that one finds hard to deal with both physically and emotionally. This is the stress which we generally talk about, which is negative and considered to be bad for us.

Stress is situational and different for everyone. What one person might perceive as “negative” can be seen as being exciting for another. Workplace stress follows the same logic.

Work-related stress is the response one exhibits when presented with demands or pressures at the job that are considered excessive & unmanageable. To ensure a healthy & productive workplace, it becomes important to keep your well-being in mind as well as everyone else’s around you. How does one do so? By understanding where the stress is coming from! Assess your stress level!

One way of doing this is by using assessments which measure your stress levels and identify where the stress is coming from. We at Mettl are in the process of developing such assessments that can enable organizations & individuals assess as well as manage stress at the workplace. As part of the standardization exercise we conducted our assessments on the Mettl employees revealing some interesting insights into their stress levels and ways to mitigate them.

We will be launching the stress assessments soon. Watch this space for more.

 

 

 

New closets to outgrow!!

Congratulations to us Mettlites for our new office space – It’s not just a new place to work. Its new closets to outgrow!

The office is abuzz with activity and excitement emanating from the news of moving to a new office space. Finally mettl.com makes the move from an office in a residential space to a new swanky corporate office in Global Business Park in the millennium city of India, Gurgaon. On the surface this move may just seem like a way to accommodate the rapidly increasing workforce but you look deeper and it becomes evident that this is the inaugural flight of confidence of a juvenile bird which has just got its wings.

Yes the workforce has almost doubled in size over the past 1 year but that’s not all about it. The power of the Mettl platform has also increased with scores of new powerful features now embedded in the platform. Many new functionalities like the SQL query evaluator, new version of Mettl Math platform, partial scoring logic for coding questions etc have increased the utility of the platform and made it multi-pronged. Recognition & words of praise have followed from credible sources like Saurabh Srivastava, pluggd.in etc. This gives winds to our sails and gives us confidence to believe in the prudence of our path and continue our journey on it.

This shift to its very own corporate office is a testimony to the faith reposed in Mettl not only by investors but also by employees and the IT community in general. All of us in Mettl hope & will endeavor to live up to the expectations and the faith which has been reposed in us by the IT fraternity and also to keep matching up to our standards which make us such a competitor.