GE Vernova Uses Customized Skills Tests to Qualify Technical Candidates, Shorten Time-To-Hire

eSkill’s pre-hire tests helped recruiters cut down on massive numbers of applicants and determine appropriate salary ranges, while also empowering knowledgeable applicants to put their best foot forward.

“Besides eSkill being a positive for us in the talent acquisition space, it also gave the candidates a voice. And it helped us align candidates with the appropriate salary ranges for certain roles."

Toni Fiore, GE Vernova senior recruiter

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GE Vernova focuses on three main segments in energy: power, wind, and electrification — employing around 77,000 individuals in more than 100 countries. With over a quarter of the world’s electricity generated by GE Vernova’s customers using their technologies, the company holds a massive role in the future of energy.

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GE Vernova also has an ambitious mission — to reach carbon neutrality in its facilities and operations by 2030. 

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And GE Vernova needs qualified individuals to push the dream forward.

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The mission is supported by the work of April Pettis and Toni Fiore, senior recruiters at GE Vernova, who look for candidates with deep knowledge and forward-thinking mindsets to bring onto the GE Vernova team — especially in the growing field of wind technology.

Once part of the GE conglomerate, GE Vernova emerged from the company’s three-way split in 2024 to lead the charge on its energy division. Since then, the company has experienced rapid growth — now valued at $125 billion, a sharp rise from roughly $36 billion just a year ago.

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The company’s name reflects both its past and its future: they’ve kept the “GE” signifier, pointing to their roots, while adding on a portmanteau, melding together “ver” (from Latin and also Spanish verde), evoking the lush greenery of the Earth, and “nova” (from Latin novus) meaning “new.” Together, they signal GE Vernova’s commitment to advancing clean energy, reducing carbon emissions, and spearheading innovation in renewables.

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Since its project portfolio was expanding rapidly — with around 57,000 wind turbines and 7,000 gas turbines worldwide — the company needed to fill a large number of wind technology specialist roles to service new and existing equipment. 

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Naturally, the company wanted to hire the best-qualified candidates and get them out in the field as quickly as possible. This meant it needed a way to screen applicants efficiently.

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However, they didn’t want to replace the “human” in the process — they needed tools to sift through high volumes of candidates and lessen the burden on recruiters, but not replace the job of human hiring managers.

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“One of the things that was key for us was not allowing the solution to replace any of our human interaction in the recruiting process. We wanted to make sure we still had contact with the candidate,” says April.

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How could the company streamline the hiring process, filtering out those unfit or not ready for roles as wind tech specialists, while still keeping human recruiters involved?

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“One of the things that was key for us was not allowing the solution to replace any of our human interaction in the recruiting process.”

April Pettis, GE Vernova senior recruiter

Proof of a solid partnership, eSkill has been such a key part of the hiring process at GE Vernova (and prior to the creation of GE Vernova, the energy division at GE), neither April or Toni could verify when the partnership exactly began.

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“So we went to do a little homework and try to find out how long we have been using eSkill or what we used beforehand and for the most part, we came out to find we had been using eSkill for a very long time. Which is certainly a testament of how eSkill has been beneficial to GE Vernova and why we’re still using it,” says April.

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Looking to automate pre-screening in addition to their typical tech assessment for wind technicians, the company first tried using a different vendor but “it just didn’t work for us,” says April. “The candidates were either completing the pre-screening questions and not the technical assessment, or the technical assessment and not the pre-screening questions. And ultimately we needed both.”

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“We were kind of ready to throw in the towel just because the process was becoming more cumbersome, it wasn’t saving us time, or fixing any of the problems we had hoped to solve,” April continues.

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Their client success manager at eSkill was able to provide them additional tools, and told them about how they could incorporate pre-screening questions into the technical assessments they were using.

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“Let me tell you, it totally simplified the process: both for the candidates, and for us as recruiters,” says April.

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And unlike their first vendor, with eSkill, they were able to customize tests to include both pre-screening questions — like asking the candidate whether they were open to relocation, for example — with the technical assessment itself. 

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“Implementing the questions definitely cleared the confusion. Because it was combined, the candidates knew to answer both the pre-screening questions and the technical assessment. And it was one email — one link they had to hit, versus having two,” April explains. 

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Unlike with their first vendor, with eSkill, the team at GE Vernova was able to customize tests to include both pre-screening questions — like asking the candidate whether they were open to relocation, for example — with the standard technical assessment. 

Since the HR team at the corporate office was familiar with and liked eSkill, GE Vernova decided to use the platform to create hiring assessments that evaluated applicants’ technical knowledge and aptitude, and additionally use it as a tool to hire for all three tiers of wind technology specialists.

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“In the space April and I sit, it’s very much high-volume recruiting. And in order to align applicants to become candidates in the right space, we have different levels for our positions. We have wind hub technicians, senior technicians, senior lead technicians. How are we going to determine where a candidate fits based on just their resumes?” Toni questions. “It’s not something that many can do.”

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Using the eSkill platform, GE Vernova created skills tests that met its specific needs by choosing questions from the eSkill Test Library, adding questions of their own, and then using the eSkill Test Editor to customize the assessment. 

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Using the eSkill platform, GE Vernova created skills tests that met its specific needs by choosing questions from the eSkill Test Library, adding questions of their own, and then using the eSkill Test Editor to customize the assessment.

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Since the company used its own proprietary ATS, it engaged eSkill’s tech team to integrate the hiring assessments and technology training materials with it. The outcome was a single, unified recruiting, hiring, and training solution that the HR team could easily manage.

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“We leveraged eSkill assessments to create a better candidate experience overall,” says April. Not only did it give candidates the flexibility to take the assessment at a convenient time for them, but “it also gave the candidates options for video, audio, or typing their responses. So if they weren’t comfortable on video or audio, they were able to write out their answers,” adds April.

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The customization of eSkill assessments also made a world of difference for the recruiting team.  “We would sometimes have these questions for the levels Toni mentioned, I, II, and III. And then we had the pre-screening questions which we combined. But then we found out that sometimes internal candidates applied, and we did not want to ask them the prescreening questions because they were already employees. So from that we were able to customize those assessments, and not send the internal candidates the pre-screening questions,” April explains.

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They additionally found that eSkill’s reporting capabilities helped out. “On the backend of eSkill, there’s reporting. Data, KPI, and metrics are important to our daily work. With eSkill we were able to provide these metrics which were needed, and definitely hold weight in our world,” Toni concludes.