§ The result
Stepstone leads Mercer | Mettl on 5 of the 7 criteria.
Under rubric v1.0, Stepstone, filed under Screening, finishes on 49 and Mercer | Mettl, filed under Assessment, on 42, 7 points apart. Mercer | Mettl is ahead on none of the 7 criteria: Stepstone takes 5, the remaining 2 are level, and the nearest of those 5 is FRIA Support, Mercer | Mettl 28 to Stepstone 30. Article 11 Technical Documentation is both the widest raw gap and the heaviest weighted swing — Mercer | Mettl 38, Stepstone 55 — and at a 20% weight it carries 47% of the weighted advantage Stepstone holds across the 5 criteria on that side of the table.
Vendor profile
Mercer | Mettl
Mercer | Mettl is an online talent assessment and remote-proctoring platform offering psychometric, aptitude, coding, and skills tests plus AI-assisted exam proctoring and scoring for hiring, certification, and L&D.
Vendor profile
Stepstone
Stepstone is a German job marketplace whose Stepstone Recruit employer platform includes an AI Screening Agent, which rates each application against requirements taken from the job ad, and a Talent Finder, which recommends candidates from a CV database of more than 4 million profiles.
§ The record
Mercer | Mettl is filed under Assessment AI, Stepstone under Screening AI. They record no secondary category in common.
Both are in scope of NYC LL 144, Illinois HB 3773, EU AI Act and Colorado AI Act. Only Mercer | Mettl is in scope of Mobley v. Workday.
| Record | Mercer | Mettl | Stepstone |
|---|---|---|
| Price tier | Mid | Mid |
| Headquarters | IN | DE |
| Founded | 2010 | 1996 |
§ What decides it
The criteria that move the gap, heaviest swing first.
20% weight · 47% of the movement so far
Article 11 Technical Documentation
Mercer | Mettl 38 · Stepstone 55
3.4 weighted points to Stepstone
12% weight · 69% of the movement so far
Human Oversight Design
Mercer | Mettl 45 · Stepstone 58
1.6 weighted points to Stepstone
18% weight · 89% of the movement so far
Bias Audit Transparency
Mercer | Mettl 42 · Stepstone 50
1.4 weighted points to Stepstone
8% weight · 96% of the movement so far
Customer Documentation
Mercer | Mettl 52 · Stepstone 58
0.5 weighted points to Stepstone
15% weight · 100% of the movement so far
FRIA Support
Mercer | Mettl 28 · Stepstone 30
0.3 weighted points to Stepstone
Weighted delta is the raw difference times the criterion weight, so the 5 figures above sum to -7.2 — the difference between the two totals before either is rounded. Shares are of 7.2 points of movement counted without direction. The table below rounds each side to a whole number first, so its Δ raw total reads -7 beside that -7.2.
§ Category-by-category
Raw score per criterion, with weighted delta.
Δ is Mercer | Mettl minus Stepstone.
| Category | Weight | Mercer | Mettl | Stepstone | Δ raw | Δ weighted |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 38 | 55 | -17 | -3.4 |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 42 | 50 | -8 | -1.4 |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 28 | 30 | -2 | -0.3 |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 55 | 55 | - | - |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 45 | 58 | -13 | -1.6 |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 38 | 38 | - | - |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 52 | 58 | -6 | -0.5 |
| Total | 100% | 42 (F) | 49 (F) | -7 | -7.2 |
§ Evidence
Cited sources and documented absences, criterion by criterion.
An absence is a finding, not a blank: the reviewer looked for a named artefact and recorded that it is not located. Where a source sits is a fact about hosting only.
| Criterion | Weight | Mercer | Mettl | Stepstone | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | Cited | Absences | Audit / hosting | ||
| Article 11 Technical Documentation | 20% | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 5 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
| Bias Audit Transparency | 18% | 0 | 1 | — | 3 | 1 | Audit reportSources on a separate domain |
| FRIA Support | 15% | 1 | 1 | — | 2 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Data Governance Disclosure | 15% | 2 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 6 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
| Human Oversight Design | 12% | 2 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 5 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| Post-Market Monitoring | 12% | 1 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 3 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
| Customer Documentation | 8% | 1 | 1 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 5 | 0 | Sources on the vendor's own domain |
| All criteria | 100% | 9 | 5 | Sources on the vendor's own domain | 29 | 4 | Audit reportSources on the vendor's own domainSources on a separate domain |
Mercer | Mettl has 14 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 9 with a source URL, 5 documented absences; Stepstone has 33 evidence rows across 7 of 7 criteria — 29 with a source URL, 4 documented absences; some documentation or audit rows for Stepstone sit on a domain separate from the vendor's own site.
Provenance
The scores above are documented by 47 evidence rows on file for these two vendors: 14 for Mercer | Mettl, across 2 distinct source domains, and 33 for Stepstone, across 6 distinct source domains.
- Rubric
- v1.0
- Mercer | Mettl last reviewed
- June 7, 2026 · HireAIScore editorial team
- Stepstone last reviewed
- September 25, 2026 · HireAIScore editorial team
HireAIScore scores are editorial research, not legal advice, and no vendor pays for placement, scoring or removal — see the methodology, conflicts policy and terms.
§ Where next