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SKILLS-BASED HIRING & ASSESSMENT

See what candidates can do before hiring.

Resumes and interviews tell you who has a good resume and who interviews well. They don’t tell you who can actually do the job, or even who's worth interviewing. Parker Dewey runs paid, real-world assignments so you know who to invest time in, and what to focus on once you do.

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A hiring manager reviewing a candidate’s completed project.

The problem

For early-career roles, the resume is a weak signal.

Early-career candidates don't have long track records, so screening falls back on proxies.  Picking someone to interview is often based on the school name, major, and GPA, and hiring decisions rely on how someone handles a series of questions that may not reflect the actual role.

None of that predicts the work. You find out whether someone is good after they start, which is the most expensive time to learn it. A wrong early-career hire costs you the salary, the ramp time, the backfill, and your team's momentum.

Rethinking Early-Career Hiring: Why More Applications Don’t Mean Better Candidates

Make the work the interview.

Parker Dewey turns the screening step into a paid assignment scoped to the skills the role actually needs. Candidates do the work, and then you see how they think, how they communicate, and the quality of what they deliver before anyone commits.

These paid assignments are called Micro-Internships, and each one is structured so you get consistent, comparable evidence across every candidate instead of a gut read. Each assignment surfaces 14+ data points on a candidate's skills and fit.

How It Works See Example Projects

What’s Handled

  • Assignments scoped to the role’s real requirements
  • Payroll, compliance and employer of record
  • Structured evaluation criteria and feedback collection

Here’s what gets assessed.

In a world where candidates can apply to a hundred jobs with one click, someone who writes a real answer about why they want your specific project has already told you something a resume can't, before you’ve invested the time on phone screens and interviews.

The rest of the application adds to it: how carefully they read the project, how clearly they write, and how they think through the problem. Then the work gives you everything else. As candidates complete the project, you see how they communicate and solve problems, the quality and presentation of what they deliver, and whether they hit the timeline.

Taken together, a single project gives you structured, comparable insight across every candidate on the dimensions that actually predict early-career performance.

  • From the application:

    Attention to detail, written communication, critical thinking, and genuine interest in the role and your organization.


  • From the completed work:

    communication, problem-solving, quality, presentation, and timeliness.

The Result

Hire with more evidence, and spend less doing it.

  • ~$600 average cost-per-hire

  • Decisions based on completed work

  • Your team’s time is spent reviewing work, not interviewing

Trusted by teams who hire early-career talent at scale.

When you interview people normally, you're going off their resume, LinkedIn, and screening questions. But when you have the opportunity to see someone's actual work ethic and what they can do, that makes a huge difference... It basically eliminated the need for me to interview her. I had two weeks with her.

Ashlie SummerVP of Product Operations, Corpay (formerly FleetCor), on hiring Jessica Tardy
Read the full story

Next Steps

Stop guessing on early-career hires.

See how Parker Dewey builds a skills-based assessment around your open roles.

Talk to Our Team How It Works