What Is an Interview Scorecard?

An interview scorecard is a tool interviewers use to objectively rate candidates’ suitability for a position based on pre-determined criteria and competencies. They include rating scales, notes on candidate answers, and recommendations about next steps. When used as a part of a structured interview process, this tool can benefit your organization in a variety of ways.

What Is a Candidate Scorecard?

A candidate scorecard is another name for an interview scorecard — also known as an interview scoring sheet, rating guide, interview rubric, or hiring scorecard. It is an assessment tool used in structured interviewing to standardize applicant evaluations. It’s used to score all candidates against the same criteria to determine if they have the necessary skills and competencies for a role.

Once all candidates have been interviewed and rated, typically the hiring manager looks at the results, discusses scores with other panelists if it was a panel interview, and decides who moves forward. 

An interview scorecard is part of an interview guide, which contains the information an interviewer needs to conduct a structured interview for a specific position.

What Do They Contain?

Interview scorecards, or hiring scorecards, are part of a structured interview process. The hiring scorecard’s content is based on the interview questions and the pre-determined skills and competencies identified in the job analysis.

Here’s what you’d see on a score sheet for a job interview:

• Scales for each job-specific competency or question
• Spot for interviewer notes
• Recommendation about next steps
• Overall score

When Does It Get Filled Out?

The most accurate way to fill out an interview scorecard is during the interview. Rating as you go, before moving on to the next question, can decrease opportunities for hiring bias.

Benefits of Using an Interview Scorecard

Here are several reasons to consider using an interview scorecard:

To Make the Process More Equitable

Interview scorecards remove subjectivity. They assess everyone against the same criteria while accounting for accommodations, making the process fairer.

Interview scorecards can also improve interview compliance by making it easier for interviewers of all levels to follow best practices and harder to stray from the process (thanks to settings in the platform).

To Prove That Your Hiring Practices Are Fair

Interview scorecards serve as formal documentation that can make your decisions more legally defensible. Rating data can demonstrate why certain hiring decisions were made and prove they weren’t discriminatory.

When used correctly, interview scorecards can also prevent adverse impact or discrimination claims from happening because they are a fair way to evaluate candidates.

To Increase Your Quality of Hire

A well-designed interview scorecard gives interviewers a much better chance of choosing a quality candidate. Why? Interview scorecards are part of a structured interview process. McGill University found that structured interviews improve accuracy, making them a strong way to detect future job performance.

Another thing to consider is that everything on an interview scorecard is directly related to the role you are hiring for. By only measuring the things that matter, you can collect better data and make better hiring decisions.

To Encourage Collaborative Hiring

Making an interview scorecard gets everyone on the same page about what an ‘ideal’ applicant would bring to the role.

For panel interviewing, standardizing the rating process makes it easy to compare scores. Diverse opinions and scores then open up the discussion about who should move forward and why.

To Accelerate Time to Hire

When combined with interview questions that predict future performance, an interview scorecard can help you figure out who is right for a role much faster.

First, isolate the most effective questions and put them earlier in the process. From there, weigh the ratings associated with these questions heavier on the interview scorecard. This is especially helpful when candidates are very close because you can compare their performance on these specific questions to expedite the process.

With interview scorecards, there is also a cadence that is established through repetition. Interviewers get more efficient at rating the more they use scorecards, and hiring managers come to understand how to use scores to make decisions efficiently.

To Reduce Opportunities for Bias

Standardization is a very effective way to reduce bias. Interview scorecards allow employers to offer a repeatable and objective evaluation experience.

To Measure Candidate Consistency

When you use interview scorecards, each step of the interview process is assigned a score. This allows hiring managers to compare each step of the candidate’s journey to confirm they’ve performed well throughout the process based on data, not on hindsight.

How to Make an Interview Scorecard

Design an interview scorecard (aka recruiting scorecard) template so hiring managers all over the organization can adopt this practice and create specific scorecards for each position. For every role-specific scorecard you make, you can keep it for the future when you’re rehiring for that same job.

1. Start With a Structured Interview Process

When created correctly, recruiting scorecards don’t exist on their own — they are an important part of a structured interview process. If your organization isn’t already using structured interviewing, this is your sign to look into it!

In order to make a recruiting scorecard you’ll first need the following things:

• 4-6 role-related criteria, skills, or competencies
• 1-2 additional scoring categories and scales*
• Interview questions
• Job description

*Could be competencies directly related to organizational objectives or values. These would be standard in all scorecards across the organization.

Everything in the list above relies on information from the job analysis, which the U.S. Office of Personnel Management describes as “the foundation for all assessment and selection decisions.”

2. Define your scales

Every scorecard needs rating scales that align with each question.

There are three common types of scales:

3. Outline the Scoring System and Advancement Protocols

Determine how you will aggregate the evaluation data. Will you manually tally everything in a spreadsheet, or are you using a digital rating guide that automatically compiles and saves everything? If it was a panel interview, leave time for a collaborative discussion about who to advance.

Next, decide if you’ll advance all candidates who achieve a certain score or the top 3-6 candidates. Determine these parameters in advance and alter them as needed once hiring is complete.

What Makes a Good Hiring Scorecard?

Here are some factors that determine the level of structure and strength of an interview scorecard:

• Based on job analysis
• Competencies align with the job description
• Scores are well defined
• Contains 4-6 skills and competencies that are specific to the job, plus 1-2 that are assessed for across the organization

How to Use Scorecards Effectively

Simply creating an interview scorecard or candidate scorecard, isn’t enough. How it’s used impacts how effective it will be. Here are some things to consider if you want a candidate scorecard to be used properly.

Interview Scorecard Example