Types of Reports on Testlify

Every assessment run on Testlify produces a report. But not all reports do the same job — and that's by design.

We built our report types around a simple principle: the output should match the decision being made. A recruiter deciding whether to shortlist someone needs a very different view of a candidate than a manager preparing for a performance conversation. We use five report categories to make those distinctions clear.

This article walks through each category — what it's for, what's in it, and how it shows up in practice.

Report types at a glance

1.  Selection Report

This is the report most people on Testlify encounter first. Every cognitive ability test, domain knowledge test, language assessment, and skills test on the platform produces a Selection Report by default — it's the format that covers the vast majority of our test library.

The job of a Selection Report is narrow and deliberate: help you decide whether a candidate clears the bar for a role. It gives you a percentage score, a sub-skill breakdown, and a colour-coded performance band so you can see exactly where someone stands without having to read through pages of narrative.

What's in the report

• Overall score as a percentage

• Sub-skill or sub-topic breakdown with individual scores

• Performance bands per sub-skill: Low (0–30%) · Medium (31–70%) · High (71–100%)

• AI-generated strengths and improvement summary

• AI-suggested interview questions — available on domain knowledge tests, these map follow-up questions directly to the candidate's weaker areas

• Trust insights: device, browser, time taken

The tests that produce this report

Selection Reports come from a wide range of test formats:

How it looks in practice

Aptitude — cognitive ability

A candidate completes an Aptitude test covering Numerical, Verbal, and Logical Reasoning. The report comes back at 50% overall, with Numerical Reasoning at 67%, Verbal at 56%, and Logical at 20%. The hiring manager doesn't need to read through every question — the Logical Reasoning score is flagged Low, and that's where the interview probing will focus.

View Sample Report

Corporate Finance — domain knowledge

A finance analyst candidate completes a Corporate Finance test. The report shows 27.78% overall, with Financial Analysis (67%) and Risk Management (67%) as clear strengths, and Financial Modeling, Valuation, and Financial Planning all at 0%. Alongside the scores, the report generates interview questions across six competency areas — the hiring panel walks into the interview with a ready-made agenda.

View Sample Report

GRC — domain knowledge, expert level

A senior compliance candidate scores 85.45% across 25 GRC questions. Nine of ten sub-skills are at 100% or near it. The single outlier — Third Party Risk and Business Continuity Governance at 17% — stands out clearly. In an otherwise strong profile, that one gap gives the hiring team a precise and specific thing to explore.

View Sample Report

Fluid Intelligence — cognitive ability

A candidate completes a Fluid Intelligence assessment and scores 15%, landing in the Not Suitable band. The sub-skill breakdown spans eight cognitive dimensions — Pattern Recognition, Abstract Reasoning, Working Memory, Mental Speed, and others — and the picture is consistent low performance across all of them, not a concentrated weakness in one area. That distinction matters when the hiring team is deciding whether to reconsider for a different role.

View Sample Report

2.  Coaching Report

Selection Reports answer a before-hire question. Coaching Reports answer an after-hire one: now that this person is on the team, how do you get the best out of them?

These reports are built for managers, HRBPs, and coaches. They go beyond a score to give a structured behavioural profile — how this person tends to work, where friction is likely to show up, and what kind of management approach suits them. The language is practical and direct, not academic.

What's in the report?

• Trait dimensions scored across a hierarchy of sub-traits

• Narrative descriptions of how each trait shows up in a work context

• Specific coaching tips and management recommendations per trait

• An Interview Guide section on the DISC report — useful when DISC is run pre-hire

The format

All seven Coaching Reports use Testlify's in-house psychometric format. This is a different beast from the standard score report — trait scores are expressed descriptively rather than as pass/fail percentages, and the output is structured around practical guidance, not a number.

How it looks in practice

A hiring manager brings on a new Account Executive and runs them through the DISC assessment before the first performance review. The report shows a strong Influence (I) profile alongside a low Conscientiousness (C) score. The coaching section flags that this person is energised by people and ideas but is likely to find structured process work draining. The manager uses that — she sets clear expectations around pipeline hygiene and builds in short, regular check-ins rather than expecting the rep to self-manage through long reporting cycles.

That's the level of specificity these reports are designed to give you.

3.  Development Report

Development Reports are written for the employee, not the manager. Where Coaching Reports help someone manage another person, Development Reports help a person understand themselves — their working style, their motivations, the edges they might want to push on.

These reports are most at home in L&D programmes, career development conversations, and high-potential pipelines. The language is non-evaluative and written to be shared directly with the individual.

What's in the report?

• Personality dimension scores across multiple trait facets

• Narrative descriptions of how each dimension shows up at work

• Development suggestions framed as opportunities, not deficiencies

• Candidate-facing language throughout — no manager shorthand

The format

All four Development Reports use the same in-house psychometric format as Coaching Reports. The difference is the audience the language is written for.

How it looks in practice

An L&D team is running a high-potential cohort programme. Every participant completes the Big Five Personality assessment. The Development Reports come back showing individual profiles across Openness, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness, and Neuroticism. Rather than sorting people into buckets, the L&D team uses the profiles to assign cohort members to workshops that play to their natural orientation — high-Openness participants go to the innovation track, high-Conscientiousness participants lead the process improvement work stream. The reports give each individual something concrete to take away as well.

4.  360 Degree Feedback Report

The 360 Report is a different kind of instrument. Every other report type on Testlify measures how a candidate responds to test questions. A 360 Report measures how the people around someone experience working with them.

Ratings come in from multiple directions — peers, direct reports, line managers, and a self-assessment — and the report consolidates them into a single view. The most useful part is usually the gap analysis: where does someone rate themselves significantly higher or lower than the people around them do? That's where the conversations worth having tend to sit.

View Sample Report

What's in the report?

• Competency scores from each rater group separately

• Aggregate scores across all raters

• Self vs. rater-group gap analysis

• Open-text qualitative feedback

• Overall performance summary

How it looks in practice

An HR team runs a 360 cycle for a cohort of senior managers. One manager's report comes back with strong scores from her direct reports and line manager — but her peers rate her strategic thinking notably lower than she rates herself. That gap doesn't show up anywhere in her performance metrics. It gets surfaced here, it gets flagged for a coaching conversation, and the manager has something specific to work on rather than a vague directive to "be more collaborative."

5.  Custom Report

Sometimes the standard report formats don't map cleanly to what a programme needs. Custom Reports are for those situations.

A Custom Report can pull together outputs from multiple assessment types — selection scores, psychometric profiles, 360 data — and present them in a format that matches a specific workflow, a client's branding, or a programme's structure. They're most common in structured graduate schemes, enterprise hiring programmes, and situations where a hiring team needs one consolidated candidate view rather than a stack of individual reports.

When a Custom Report makes sense

• You're running a programme with a defined assessment sequence

• Your organisation has a report format requirement — regulatory, legal, or brand-driven

• You want a single-page candidate summary that draws from multiple assessments

• You need white-labelled reporting for an external client or partner

How it looks in practice

A financial services firm runs a structured graduate programme using three assessments: Aptitude, Corporate Finance, and Cultural Fit. Rather than sending hiring managers three separate reports per candidate, their Custom Report consolidates the key scores from each into a single view — ordered by what matters most at each stage of their process — and formatted to the firm's internal template. The interview question sets from the domain test are pulled through automatically.

All reports considered for this document— quick reference

Cultural Fit is the only psychometric-format report in the Selection category. All other psychometric reports sit in Coaching or Development.