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Design Assessment Plan

Learn how to map your role criteria to the right assessments in Alva's Hiring System. In the Design step, you'll build a complete assessment plan that evaluates each requirement fairly and consistently.

Written by Pernilla Ahl

Getting started

Once you've defined your role criteria, the next step is designing your assessment plan. This is where you review the complete assessment structure that Architect has created for you.

Alva's AI (Architect) automatically builds a complete assessment plan based on your role and maps criterion to the most appropriate assessment methods. You can review the plan, add or remove assessments, and adjust the order to fit your hiring workflow.

Understanding the Design view

The Design view displays your assessment plan as a series of stage columns, with each assessment shown as a card containing its assigned criteria.

What you'll see:

  • Stage columns: Your stages arranged horizontally

  • Assessment cards: Each stage contains assessment cards showing which criteria are evaluated at that step

  • Assigned criteria: Skills, background, and traits displayed as tags within each assessment card

  • Job description panel: Click the Job description button in the top right to view:

    • Your complete role overview from the Define step

    • All skills and background requirements

    • A "Not used in any of the assessments" section showing unassigned criteria

💡Note: You don't need to assess every single criterion. Focus on the requirements that truly differentiate strong candidates from weak ones, and leave nice-to-have criteria unassigned if they don't impact your decision.

Assessment types in the Design view

When you review your assessment plan, you'll see different types of assessments - here's what each one evaluates. Click the links to read more about each assessment:

  1. Screening for readiness: Structured review of candidate profiles against your job requirements

  2. Personality test: Evaluates behavioural traits and work style preferences

  3. Logic test: Measures problem-solving ability and cognitive skills

  4. Interview: Structured conversations that explore a candidate's experience, motivation, and role-specific knowledge. The criteria assigned to each interview determine its focus - you can add multiple interview stages with different skills attached.

  5. Coding test: Assesses technical skills in a realistic programming environment

  6. Work sample: A task or exercise that mirrors the actual work a candidate would do in the role, giving you a realistic view of how someone approaches problems and delivers results.

💡Good to know about work samples: Today, Architect generates structured interview questions based on the criteria assigned to a work sample - rather than a full case exercise. We're actively exploring ways to expand this with more hands-on assessment formats in the future, so stay tuned!

Managing stages

Your assessment plan is organised into stages - each stage groups one or more assessments into a step of your hiring process. You can fully customise stages to match your workflow.

To add a new stage:

  1. Click Add new assessment stage in the top right corner, or click between two existing stages

  2. Give the stage a name that reflects its purpose (e.g. "Technical review", "Final interview")

  3. Drag assessments into the new stage, or add new assessments directly by clicking Add assessment

To rename a stage:

  1. Click the stage name at the top of the column

  2. Type the new name and press Enter

To change a stage's colour or icon:

  1. Click the icon at the top of the stage column

  2. Choose a new colour or icon from the available options

Managing assessments

You're not limited to what Architect recommends - you can move, add, and remove assessments at any time to tailor the plan to your hiring process.

To move an assessment between stages:

  1. Drag and drop the assessment card from one stage column to another

  2. The assigned criteria stay with the assessment - only its position changes

To add an assessment:

  1. Click Add assessment in the stage where you want it

  2. Choose from the available options

Personality test, Logic test, and Coding test can only be added once per job.

To remove an assessment:

  1. Click the three-dot menu (⋯) on the assessment card

  2. Select Remove assessment

  3. Any criteria previously assigned to it will move back to the unassigned panel

Reviewing unassigned criteria

Click the Job description button in the top right to view criteria that aren't currently mapped to any assessment. These appear under the "Not used in any of the assessments" section. Before moving to the next step, review this list.

You have three options for unassigned criteria:

  1. Assign them to an existing assessment: How you do this differs by assessment type - see the guides for Screening for readiness, Personality and Logic tests, and Interviews

  2. Leave them: If they're nice-to-have, you can proceed without them or go back to the Define step and remove them.

Next steps

Once you click Proceed, you'll move to the next step: setting role criteria. Here, Alva will suggest relevant skills, background requirements, and traits based on your job description.

➡️ Next step: Set Role Criteria

Any Questions?

Use the chat in the bottom right corner to connect with a member of our support team.

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