You can look at all the resumes and cover letters you want, but sometimes these documents don’t give an employer the full story behind a potential employee. How can you ensure you’re hiring the best of the best?

That is a big question of concern for companies looking to hire better and lower cost and metrics by improving their quality of hire.  Recruiter and hiring managers want less candidates of better quality.  Sometimes, it’s beneficial for an employer to look into different sources of information to glean insight about candidates. A slew of new software and websites are making it easier for employers to stack candidates against each other. Check out these options to test potential employees while they’re still candidates:

Test Your Candidate Skills & Knowledge Base.

To truly test your candidate’s skill set, try having them use a site like Smarterer to assess their knowledge. Users answer multiple-choice questions related to various digital, social, and technical skills. The site crowdsources questions and uses a scoring algorithm to increase ranking accuracy. Hiring managers can browse hundreds of topics to create a set of specific skills to test, then link to the skillset in a job post or send it to potential hires. From there, candidates can prove what they know.

Another option is ShinyNeedle, which allows hiring managers to test candidates’ critical thinking and problem-solving skills. On the site, recruiters can post job descriptions with a twist—each one includes a real business challenge to solve, so employers can assess how adequately the candidate can apply their skills to a real problem facing the organization. HireArt is a similar company—it allows recruiters to create tests for candidates, who respond via text or video.  Each of these sites offers an excellent way to weed out candidates who don’t demonstrate key abilities for your company.

See if Potential Hires Come Highly Recommended.

Just because a potential employee has a few hundred LinkedIn connections, that doesn’t mean all of their professional contacts would actually recommend them for a job. Sites like Recmnd.Me allow you to see if your candidate comes highly recommended by their colleagues and former bosses. Recmnd.Me allows professionals to rate each other on a scale of 1 to 10 in a number of specific categories.  The site pools the rankings so you can see how candidates stack up against each other.

Zao is a similar site, though it works a bit differently. Zao allows recruiters to write a job description, set a reward, and then forward the position to their professional network, who can recommend top candidates. The site allows you to see how exactly you’re connected to candidates, so you can get a reference for them from a trusted source.

Bright is another new tool that evaluates candidates using a powerful algorithm that recommends jobs and provides them with a Bright Score.  Prospective companies and job seekers can see the score with candidates who more closely match the qualifications based on their skills and experience having a higher score.

Consider Inviting Candidates to a One-Way Tnterview.

Interviewing is a time-consuming process—even phone interviews can take up a huge chunk of a hiring manager’s time. That’s why companies like Spark Hire encourage recruiters to invite candidates to record themselves conducting a one-way interview using the power of video recording for candidate evaluation. Basically, the hiring manager sends a candidate a request for them to answer a few basic questions, and the candidate films themself answering them and sends the video back. The result is a quick and easy way to filter out candidates who may not be the best fit for your company—and no one has to waste time meeting face-to-face!

When testing potential hires to ensure they’re truly a great fit for your company, resumes and cover letters often aren’t enough. Try these tools for testing employees while they’re still candidates, and watch your hiring process improve tenfold.

Would you consider using tools like this to test potential employees while they’re candidates? How do you think it would benefit your hiring process?

Heather R. Huhman is a career expert, experienced hiring manager, and founder & president of Come Recommended, a content marketing and digital PR consultancy for organizations with products that target job seekers and/or employers. She is also the author of Lies, Damned Lies & Internships (2011), #ENTRYLEVELtweet: Taking Your Career from Classroom to Cubicle (2010), and writes career and recruiting advice for numerous outlets.