Two Different Approaches to the Same Problem

EditingTests.com and TestGorilla both help HR teams assess candidates before hiring. But they approach the problem from fundamentally different starting points — and for editorial hiring, the differences matter significantly.

TestGorilla is a general-purpose skills assessment platform. It covers hundreds of test types across many domains: cognitive ability, personality, programming languages, software tools, and a range of professional skills. It is designed for breadth — a single platform that can serve an IT company hiring developers and a retailer hiring customer service staff.

EditingTests.com is a specialist editorial assessment platform. It does one thing: measures editorial skill. It has been doing that single thing since 1998, with a depth of specialisation that a general platform cannot replicate.

Test Quality and Ecological Validity

For editorial roles, ecological validity — how closely the test resembles real editorial work — is one of the most important quality criteria. A test that presents text in a plain web form and asks candidates to retype corrected versions measures something quite different from a test that presents the same content in a realistic editorial environment.

EditingTests.com built a simulated track-changes editing environment specifically for its copy-editing assessment. Candidates work in an interface that mirrors the track-changes functionality of a professional word processor — the same environment they will use in the actual job. This is a level of ecological validity that general platforms do not offer, because it requires specialist product investment that only makes sense for an organisation focused exclusively on editorial assessment.

TestGorilla offers writing and proofreading assessments, but these are general-purpose tools rather than specialist editorial instruments. For general screening they may serve their purpose; for precision editorial hiring, the difference in ecological validity is significant.

Industry Vocabulary: No Comparison

This is the most decisive difference. EditingTests.com offers an Industry Vocabulary Test covering over 3,800 distinct industries and specialisms — medical, legal, financial, scientific, technical, and many more. No other assessment platform comes close to this coverage.

TestGorilla does not offer industry-specific vocabulary testing for editorial roles. Its vocabulary assessments test general language rather than domain-specific professional terminology.

For organisations hiring editors in specialist fields — medical publishers, legal firms, financial communications, academic journals, technical documentation teams — the availability of industry vocabulary testing is not a nice-to-have. It is a fundamental capability that determines whether the assessment process can actually measure the most important competency for the role.

Benchmarking and Percentile Data

EditingTests.com has been benchmarking editorial candidates since 1998. Its database contains results from over 130,000 candidates across its seven assessment types. Every score is reported with a percentile ranking against this large, validated population.

TestGorilla also offers percentile benchmarking, but its comparison pools for editorial-specific tests are necessarily smaller, because editorial assessments represent a fraction of the total tests administered across its much broader platform.

The practical effect: EditingTests.com percentile scores are more stable and reliable for editorial roles, because they are drawn from a larger, more relevant comparison population. A 75th percentile score on EditingTests.com means the candidate outperformed 75% of a pool of over 130,000 editorial candidates specifically. The same percentile score on a smaller, mixed-domain pool carries less precision.

Pricing

EditingTests.com uses a credit-based pricing model: one credit per candidate tested, with no expiry date. Credits can be purchased in any quantity, used for any of the seven test types, and applied whenever needed. There are no monthly subscription fees for basic access and no per-seat charges.

TestGorilla charges via subscription tiers with per-candidate pricing that varies by plan. For organisations that test intermittently or in seasonal bursts, the credit model is typically more cost-effective. For organisations that test continuously at high volume, subscription pricing may offer better economics depending on volume.

Which Platform Is Right for Your Editorial Hiring?

The answer depends on what you are hiring for:

  • If you are hiring for general editorial or communications roles and already use TestGorilla for other hiring across the organisation, TestGorilla may serve adequately for basic language screening.
  • If you are hiring for specialist editorial roles — in publishing, legal, medical, financial, or technical fields — EditingTests.com is the only platform that can deliver industry vocabulary testing alongside general editorial assessment. The combination is not available anywhere else.
  • If editorial quality is a primary hiring criterion — not just a nice-to-have but a genuine determinant of hire quality — the specialist depth of EditingTests.com justifies using a dedicated editorial assessment platform rather than a general-purpose one.

The 28 years of benchmark data, the track-changes editing environment, and the 3,800+ industry vocabulary tests represent a level of investment in editorial assessment specifically that no general platform has made. For organisations where editorial quality matters, that investment translates directly into better hiring decisions.