How To Use An Interview Scorecard
Have you ever left an interviewing feeling like you still had lingering questions about a client?
Do you find comparing and selecting candidates difficult?
Attracting a qualified talent pool is hard - but what can be even more difficult is narrowing that pool down to the best candidate. One of the biggest challenges that arises during the selection process is having critical information gaps across candidates. This stems from unstructured interviews. It’s very common for interview conversations to get side tracked or key questions to be missed when there is no guideline to help structure interviews.
That’s where interview scorecards come in.
What is an interview scorecard?
An interview scorecard (sometimes referred to as a ‘hiring scorecard’) is a form that each interviewer fills out for each candidate. Scorecards list important skill sets and competencies you want to assess candidates on.
A scorecard typically includes:
Clearly defined competencies specific to the role
Questions corresponding to each competency
A rating system beside each competency (i.e. scale of 1-5)
A comments section
A total score section
Having a clear definition of what you’re looking for helps hiring managers focus uncovering candidates strengths (and weaknesses) in relation to the key competencies needed for the role.
Benefits of scorecards
The obvious attraction to scorecards is that they help make interviews more productive. The truth is that the benefits span just interviewing and take place even in the building of the scorecard by improving internal alignment on hiring must-haves, expectation setting, and more.
Overall, using scorecards:
Establishes consistent and objective assessment across candidates
Provides a useful tool for comparing candidates
Helps hiring managers and stakeholders align on and prioritize deciding factors
Reduces unrealistic expectations by forcing managers to define and shortlist “must haves”
Encourages collaborative hiring, as each interviewer will fill out a scorecard
Keeps hiring criteria in perspective during interviews and improves interview focus
Reduces impact of biases by providing a consistent interview guide and ensuring decisions are based on a pre-determined list of skills and competencies
How to create an interview scorecard
There are a million “nice-to-haves” a manager would like to see in a candidate. And while you should investigate which nice-to-haves each candidate offers, the scorecard aims to keep interviews honed in on the “must haves” that will truly make or break a candidate’s success in the role. When first building a scorecard, ask yourself and other key hiring stakeholders the following questions to help fuel conversation on what the key criteria should be:
What will activities will the person in this role spend 80% of their time doing?
What competencies and objectives will the hired candidate be assessed on in their quarterly or annual reviews?
What experience or competencies do our best employees in this role have?
What experience or competencies did our less successful employees in this role lack?
Are there any skillsets that this role was built to inject into the organization?
Not all competencies and skills are going to be of equal importance. Having these upfront discussions helps align stakeholders on what areas need to be prioritized during the interview and selection process.
By standardizing a pre-set list of “must haves”, you’ll be able to more consistently intake the critical information needed for each candidate, which in turn will make comparing candidates easier during the selection process.
Interested in using a scorecard but don’t know where to start? Download our interview scorecard template here.
Our take
Interview scorecards are incredibly helpful - they aid in avoiding risky hires, improve hiring speed, and reduce the presence of bias during selection. When the cost of replacing an employee or bad hire is so high, the effort needed to create a scorecard is always justified.
At Ari Agency, we help business find and choose their greatest hires. Contact us today to learn more about how we can help you improve your hiring process and find your next all-star.
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