The Gamified Soft Skills Assessment
Built on SJT Methodology
92% of hiring managers can't accurately assess soft skills in interviews. innerly eliminates the guesswork — measuring the leadership competencies that predict real-world performance, objectively and at scale.
of hiring managers admit they cannot accurately evaluate soft skills through traditional interviews alone.
Source: Society for Human Resource Management (SHRM)
The interview process is broken for soft skills.
Structured questions, resumes, and gut feel are no match for the complexity of human behaviour. Interviewers unconsciously favour candidates who remind them of themselves — introducing gender, age, cultural, and affinity biases before a single day of work begins.
The result: organisations consistently hire and promote people based on interview performance rather than actual leadership potential — then wonder why communication breaks down, deadlines slip, and teams struggle under pressure.
The solution isn't a better interview. It's removing the interview from the soft skills evaluation entirely.
Science-backed assessment. Game-changing delivery.
innerly's Situational Judgement Test methodology is a psychometrically validated approach trusted by researchers and HR scientists worldwide. Instead of asking "tell me about a time when…", candidates step into an immersive world and show how they actually think and decide.
Become the Mayor of Skill City
Candidates are appointed Mayor of Skill City — a vibrant fictional world with real workplace dynamics. The game-based framing removes test anxiety and social desirability bias, producing more authentic behavioural data.
Navigate 51 realistic scenarios
Across 10 storylines and 16 locations, candidates encounter challenges spanning social housing policy, budget crises, team conflict, media relations, and more — each designed to surface specific leadership competencies without telegraphing what's being measured.
Receive objective competency data
Every decision is scored against 17 scientifically validated behavioural indicators, mapped to 4 core leadership competencies. Employers receive detailed individual reports and aggregate people analytics — actionable data for hiring, promotion, and development.
Four competencies. 17 measurable skills.
Selected based on decades of occupational psychology research, these are the competencies most predictive of leadership success across roles and industries.
Adaptability
The capacity to change approaches and decisions in line with evolving reality — including out-of-the-box thinking, complex decision-making, and building effective relationships under pressure.
Effective Communication
The capability to build constructive, impactful relationships on trust — covering assertiveness, empathy, stakeholder coordination, and structuring coherent messages.
Execution Ability
The qualities that allow you to achieve a desired result on time — including prioritisation, resource management, disciplined effort, and maintaining focus on what matters.
Systemic Thinking
The capability to make decisions based on a big-picture view and cause-effect chains — including breaking down complexity, making decisions under uncertainty, and balancing competing factors.
Why gamified assessment outperforms traditional psychometrics
Research consistently shows that gamified assessments generate higher completion rates, more authentic responses, and stronger candidate experience scores than questionnaire-based tests. When candidates are immersed in a compelling narrative, they respond instinctively — giving you a more accurate picture of how they will actually behave on the job.
Frequently Asked Questions
Everything HR leaders need to know about innerly's gamified soft skills assessment and SJT methodology.
What is a Situational Judgement Test (SJT) and how does innerly use it?
A Situational Judgement Test (SJT) is a psychometrically validated assessment method that presents candidates with realistic workplace scenarios and asks them to choose how they would respond. Rather than relying on self-reported answers, SJTs measure actual decision-making patterns against scientifically established behavioural indicators. innerly delivers its SJT through an immersive gamified environment — candidates play the role of the newly appointed Mayor of Skill City, navigating 51 real-world scenarios across 10 storylines. This approach removes social desirability bias, making responses more authentic and the resulting data more predictive of on-the-job performance.
How does innerly's gamified soft skills assessment reduce unconscious bias in hiring?
Traditional interviews are subject to a wide range of unconscious biases — gender, age, ethnicity, accent, and appearance can all influence an interviewer's judgement, often without their awareness. innerly's gamified soft skills assessment removes the human variable from the evaluation stage. Candidates interact with a fictional city and its 27 diverse characters; their choices are scored against objective behavioural criteria, not against the interviewer's personal experience or cultural frame of reference. The platform has been specifically developed to eliminate gender, age, and national bias from the scoring model, ensuring every candidate is assessed on behaviour alone.
What soft skills and leadership competencies does innerly measure?
innerly measures four core leadership competencies: Adaptability (capacity to change approaches and make complex decisions in evolving conditions), Effective Communication (building trust-based relationships and coordinating stakeholders), Execution Ability (delivering results through disciplined planning, prioritisation, and focus), and Systemic Thinking (making decisions from a big-picture view based on cause-and-effect chains). These four competencies map to 17 specific soft skills, each assessed multiple times across different scenarios to ensure reliability and depth.
How long does the innerly assessment take to complete?
The full innerly assessment covers 51 scenarios across 10 storylines and typically takes between 60 and 90 minutes to complete. Candidates can pause and resume at any point, making it suitable for both office and remote settings. The immersive, game-based format consistently achieves high completion rates compared to traditional psychometric tests.
How is innerly different from traditional personality tests like MBTI or DISC?
Personality tests like MBTI and DISC are based on self-reported answers to direct questions, which are highly susceptible to social desirability bias — candidates answer how they think they should, not how they actually behave. innerly uses the SJT methodology, which measures behavioural responses in context. Decisions made inside the game are harder to game than a questionnaire, producing data that is more objective, more predictive of real-world performance, and more defensible for hiring and promotion decisions. innerly focuses specifically on leadership soft competencies, not personality typologies, making outputs directly actionable for HR teams.
Is innerly suitable for high-volume recruitment and enterprise hiring?
Yes. innerly is designed to operate at scale, making it well-suited for high-volume recruitment campaigns, graduate schemes, and assessment centres. Because the platform delivers standardised scenarios to every candidate and scores responses against validated behavioural indicators, HR teams can screen large applicant pools consistently and efficiently — without the time and cost of conducting individual competency-based interviews at early stages.
Can innerly be used for internal promotions and team development, not just hiring?
Absolutely. Many organisations use innerly beyond hiring — for identifying internal promotion candidates, mapping team strengths and development gaps, building succession pipelines, and designing targeted L&D programmes. The detailed competency reports produced by innerly give managers a data-driven baseline for career development conversations and help organisations invest in development where it will have the most impact.
What does an employer receive in the innerly assessment report?
Employers receive a detailed competency report for each assessed individual, including scored levels across the four core competencies and all 17 underlying soft skills. Reports highlight relative strengths, development areas, and a summary profile that can be used directly in hiring decisions, performance reviews, or development planning. Aggregate team data is also available for people analytics and workforce planning purposes.
Which countries and industries is innerly used in?
innerly is used by HR leaders and talent teams across the US, UK, Canada, and Europe. The platform is industry-agnostic — the soft competencies it measures are universally relevant to leadership roles across sectors including technology, financial services, professional services, healthcare, retail, and the public sector. The game's 27 characters and storylines have been designed to reflect realistic diversity, making the assessment culturally inclusive for international deployments.
Stop guessing.
Start measuring.
Join HR leaders across the US, UK, Canada, and Europe who use innerly to hire confidently and develop their best people.