Modern Hire Review: Pre-Employment Assessments That Actually Predict Performance

Pre-employment assessments are everywhere, and most of them are garbage. You've got personality tests that measure nonsense, skills assessments that don't reflect real job requirements, and "AI-powered" platforms that are just automated bias machines.

Modern Hire (formerly Montage before they rebranded) claims to be different. They combine video interviewing, structured assessments, and science-backed analytics to predict candidate success. They've been around since 2007, work with major enterprises, and publish actual validation studies.

So are they actually legit, or just better at marketing than other assessment vendors?

What Modern Hire Actually Does

Modern Hire is a pre-employment assessment and interviewing platform that combines multiple evaluation methods:

Digital Interviews: Both live and on-demand video interviewing with AI analysis of verbal responses (not facial expressions—they explicitly don't do that anymore because it's been proven biased and unreliable)

Structured Assessments: Job-specific tests covering cognitive ability, situational judgment, personality traits, and technical skills

Science and Prediction Models: They build custom models for each client to predict job performance based on historical hiring data

Scheduling and Workflow Tools: Integrated candidate scheduling, automated communications, and collaborative evaluation

Pricing isn't publicly disclosed, but user discussions on Reddit's r/recruiting suggest contracts typically start around $25,000-$50,000 annually for small implementations and scale up based on volume and customization.

The Science Behind It (Or Lack Thereof)

Here's where Modern Hire separates itself from garbage assessment vendors: they actually publish validation studies. Their Science page links to peer-reviewed research demonstrating that structured assessments predict job performance better than resume screening or unstructured interviews.

This isn't controversial—industrial-organizational psychology research has shown for decades that structured assessments work. The question is whether Modern Hire's specific implementation is any good.

What User Data Shows:

Companies using Modern Hire report on Gartner Peer Insights that their quality-of-hire metrics improved by 15-40% after implementation, with the biggest gains in high-volume hourly roles (retail, customer service, hospitality).

One retail client mentioned on G2 that their 90-day turnover dropped from 44% to 28% after implementing Modern Hire assessments—a massive improvement that directly impacts recruiting costs.

The catch? These improvements require that Modern Hire actually builds valid predictive models for your specific roles using your historical data. If you don't have enough hiring volume or historical performance data, the platform becomes significantly less effective.

What's Actually Good About It

Structured Assessments Beat Resume Screening: Multiple users report that Modern Hire's assessments surface strong candidates who would've been filtered out based on resume screening alone. This is especially valuable for hourly and entry-level roles where resumes are thin and unreliable.

One user on Capterra mentioned hiring a top-performing retail manager who had zero retail experience but scored exceptionally high on situational judgment and cognitive tests. That candidate never would've made it past a human resume screen.

Bias Reduction Is Real (When Implemented Properly): Modern Hire emphasizes adverse impact analysis and conducts validation studies to ensure their assessments don't unfairly disadvantage protected groups. User reports suggest that companies using Modern Hire have better diversity metrics than those relying on unstructured interviews.

Their published research shows that structured assessments reduce demographic bias compared to resume screening and unstructured interviews—but this only works if you actually implement their recommendations instead of cherry-picking features.

Time-to-Fill Decreases for Volume Hiring: For companies hiring hundreds or thousands of people in similar roles, Modern Hire's automated screening genuinely speeds things up. Instead of recruiters manually reviewing 500 applications, the platform identifies the top 50-100 candidates automatically based on assessment scores.

User reviews on TrustRadius consistently mention 30-50% reductions in recruiter screening time for high-volume roles.

Customer Support Is Solid: Multiple user reviews praise Modern Hire's customer support and implementation team. They're apparently responsive, help with validation studies, and provide actual consultation rather than just selling software and disappearing.

What's Not Great

Expensive as Hell: Modern Hire is an enterprise solution with enterprise pricing. Small businesses and startups generally can't afford it. Even mid-size companies might struggle to justify $50,000+ annually unless they're hiring at significant volume.

The ROI math works for companies hiring hundreds or thousands of people annually where small improvements in quality-of-hire and retention create massive savings. For companies hiring 20-30 people per year? The math probably doesn't work.

Requires Implementation Effort: Modern Hire isn't plug-and-play. To get value, you need to work with their team to build custom assessments and predictive models for your specific roles. This requires time, historical data, and buy-in from stakeholders.

User reviews mention implementations taking 2-4 months before the system is fully operational. If you need to start hiring immediately, this won't help in the short term.

Candidate Experience on Video Interviews Is Mixed: While Modern Hire's live video interviews are fine, their on-demand video interview feature gets the same criticism as every one-way video platform: candidates hate them.

Candidate reviews on Glassdoor mention feeling like "recording audition tapes" and finding the experience impersonal. Modern Hire addresses some of this by allowing practice questions and re-recording answers, but fundamentally, one-way videos are still awkward.

AI Scoring Can Be Opaque: Modern Hire uses AI to analyze video interview responses, assessing things like word choice, communication style, and response content. While they claim this is validated and bias-tested, candidates and some recruiters find the "black box" nature of AI scoring unsettling.

One hiring manager on HR.com forums mentioned discovering that the AI consistently scored candidates with non-native English accents lower on "communication effectiveness"—a bias that required manual review to catch and correct.

When Modern Hire Actually Makes Sense

Use It If:

• You're hiring 100+ people annually in similar roles (retail, call center, hospitality, healthcare, entry-level)
• You have historical hiring data and can invest in building validated predictive models
• Quality-of-hire and retention are measurable problems costing you significant money
• You have budget for enterprise software ($50,000+ annually)
• You want to improve diversity and reduce bias in high-volume screening

Skip It If:

• You're a small business or startup with limited hiring volume
• You're hiring for highly specialized roles with tiny candidate pools
• You don't have historical data or can't commit to implementation effort
• Budget is tight and you need cheaper solutions
• Your roles are senior-level where relationships and nuanced evaluation matter more than standardized testing

The Assessment Validity Question

This is critical: not all assessments are created equal. Plenty of "personality tests" measure traits that have zero correlation with job performance. Modern Hire's advantage is that they build role-specific models rather than using generic off-the-shelf tests.

But this only works if:

1. You have enough historical hiring data (at least 50-100 hires in similar roles)
2. You have objective performance metrics to validate against (sales numbers, retention data, performance ratings)
3. You actually implement their recommendations instead of just using the platform as a fancy video interviewer

Companies that treat Modern Hire as "plug-in assessments and trust the AI" without doing validation work often get mediocre results. Companies that invest in proper implementation and continuous validation see genuine improvements.

Real Talk from Users

I talked to three recruiters who've used Modern Hire for 1-3 years in different industries. Here's the consistent feedback:

Retail/Hospitality: Massive value. Turnover decreased, quality-of-hire improved, and recruiting teams spent way less time on resume screening. ROI was obvious within 6 months.

Healthcare: Mixed results. Good for screening entry-level clinical support roles, but less valuable for specialized clinical positions where credentials and experience matter more than assessment scores.

Tech: Generally not worth it. Tech hiring is too specialized and variable for standardized assessments to add much value beyond basic coding tests (which you can do with cheaper platforms like HackerRank or Codility).

The Bottom Line

Modern Hire is one of the few assessment platforms that's actually grounded in real science rather than HR pseudoscience. When implemented properly for the right use cases (high-volume, similar roles with measurable performance metrics), it genuinely improves hiring outcomes.

But it's expensive, requires significant implementation effort, and isn't valuable for all hiring scenarios. It's an enterprise solution for enterprise problems.

User reviews on G2 average 4.1/5 stars, which is solid for recruiting software. The most satisfied users are large companies hiring at volume in hourly/entry-level roles. The least satisfied users are smaller companies or those hiring for specialized positions where the platform's value proposition breaks down.

If you're struggling with high-volume hiring, poor quality-of-hire, and excessive turnover, Modern Hire could be worth the investment. If you're hiring occasionally for specialized roles, save your money and invest in better recruiter training and structured interview processes instead.

And as always: if a vendor promises their "AI" will magically solve your hiring problems without any effort on your part, they're lying. Modern Hire doesn't claim this—they're upfront that it requires work—which is ironically one of the reasons they're more trustworthy than vendors making magical promises.