How To Evaluate Job Candidates (Before And After And Interview)

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If you want your hiring process to be successful, you need to evaluate candidates effectively. This takes preparation and execution that considers many variables.

Evaluating candidates for job positions require an understanding of your needs, your biases, and the potential of others. Combined, these all provide you with the tools to find what you seek.

Key Takeaways:

• Consider using an interview scorecard based on predetermined standards that focus on a candidate’s competency to the responsibilities of the position.

• Give yourself time after the interview to do an immediate evaluation.

• The skills, experience, educational background, values, and goals of a candidate all help determine their potential.

• Although you want to be as objective as possible, be mindful of your biases and use your empathy to build a deeper connection with the candidate.

How to Evaluate Candidates Before the Interview

You may not realize it, but evaluating a candidate for a job begins before the interview. The steps you take from the very start will determine the success of your evaluation, so make sure to:

1. Prepare standards of evaluation. This is key to remaining as objective and organized as possible, which will help you be efficient and avoid discriminatory behavior.

   Work with your team and members of your company to come up with standards that you can use to measure all candidates against. Create a scorecard that helps identify qualifying factors, particularly during the interviews.

2. Pre-screen. Whether you are using applicant tracking systems (ATS) or reviewing applications yourself, you will need to know from the start what you want out of an ideal candidate.

   Determine if there are years of experience, types of education, or specific skills you need to see from applicants to help you filter out the best ones. Also, read over cover letters to discover passionate and motivated candidates.

3. Screen. A phone or video phone interview that lasts about 15 minutes should be enough to tell you if a candidate is worth further evaluation. Use screening techniques and questions that help you understand if the applicant meets a minimum level of professionalism.

How to Evaluate Candidates During the Interview

An interview is a form of evaluation, but its effectiveness depends on how you manage it. Therefore, to evaluate candidates during an interview.

1. Use an interview scorecard. This will help you keep your evaluations standardized and relatively objective. You will then use the scorecard to measure candidates against one another. This also acts as a reference after the interview when you need to review the candidate’s performance and your own impressions.

2. Take notes. You should not base your evaluation solely on the scorecard. Notes are equally important as the scorecard because they allow you to make other observations that are not tied to your standardized format. Use your notes to write down any thoughts or feelings you have that can be used later when you make your judgment.

3. Observe behavior. Don’t just get caught up in filling out scorecards or writing down notes. You want to be present and actively listen to the candidate. This includes watching how they behave because body language provides an important layer of communication.

   The behavior of your candidate can tell you whether or not they are interested in the position, confident in their abilities, or have the social skills that might be necessary for the position.

How to Evaluate Candidates After the Interview

Full evaluation of a potential hire begins after the interview because this is where you take all the information to come to a decision. To do this successfully, you will need to:

1. Evaluate immediately after the interview. You want to take advantage while your memory is still fresh. Take some final notes and finish up your scorecard. Then look over what you have written and consider your first impressions. All of this will tell you if the candidate ranks among three general categories:

   • They are a highly desirable candidate.

   • They are a potential candidate.

   • They are not a potential candidate.

   Very likely most of your candidates will fall in the middle category, which will require you to take a deeper look into your thoughts on each one.

2. Get feedback from others. Preferably, you will have your candidate interviewed by multiple people. This can occur during a group panel or in separate one-on-one interviews.

   If this is not possible, at least have multiple people review the interview scorecard, your notes, and the candidate’s application materials, such as their resume, cover letter, and portfolio.

   In any case, you do not want to make your final decision alone, especially since it will have a great impact on your company and employees. Feedback from others can help you detect positive or negative traits you may have missed, as well as show you if the candidate makes a good fit for the company.

3. Compare candidates against each other. Once all your interviews are finished, use your scorecard, notes, and other hiring materials to decide who you think makes the best choice. Hopefully, you have talked to others, and they have done the same.

   In the end, you make the final choice, so consider your needs, the needs of the company, and the needs of your employees, and then pick the candidate who best fills those needs and whose values align with yours.

What to Evaluate In a Job Candidate

• Skills. Hard and soft skills determine if a candidate is capable of working in the position. You will want to look for the skills that you believe are necessary to succeed. These skills should be prioritized and listed in the job description. As you review the candidate’s materials and interview, you should be able to get a sense of their skill level.

• Experience. When you evaluate a candidate’s experience, you want to look for evidence that this potential employee has a proven track record that validates their skills. Their professional experience hopefully shows quantifiable successes and achievements that point towards their potential for you and your company.

• Education. In some positions and industries, a relevant educational background is necessary to perform well. This is true in fields such as healthcare and engineering. In other situations where education may not play a huge role in your decision, it can still help you evaluate the candidate’s skills in commitment and teamwork.

• References. The reference background check is another way to get outside feedback about this potential employee. The references help verify the candidate’s qualifications and give you insight into their past behavior.

• Salary expectations. If you find yourself struggling to evaluate candidates, you might use their salary expectations to see how they can fit into your company. If you have a perfect candidate with salary expectations above your budget, then you will want to negotiate with the candidate.

• Language proficiency. If language proficiency is necessary for the position or you’re hiring internationally, consider using a language assessment solution like Pipplet. It’s an easy, fast, and reliable platform that’s great for both your company and the candidates you’re screening.

• Cultural fit. A candidate who does not fit your company’s culture will have a negative impact even if a candidate is extremely qualified for the position. You want to be sure your candidate understands the mission of the company and can work with others to achieve common goals.

• Values and goals. Similar to a cultural fit, you should look into the candidate’s professional values and goals. They will reveal the candidate’s potential as an employee.

  The most successful and motivated employees are usually ones whose goals and values align with the company because as they work to improve the company, they work towards improving themselves.

Tips for Evaluating Job Candidates

• Be mindful of biases. Probably the most important thing about an effective interview evaluation is to be aware that biases play a role in decision-making. Understand your biases ahead of time and focus your standards on a candidate’s competency for the position.

  Biases can be either conscious or subconscious, which are harder to detect. It is helpful to know that biases can include your comfort or discomfort with people of certain ages, races, genders, ethnicities, or other cultures.

  Biases can also be based on expectations, so be aware when expectations are subverted if you have an emotional reaction rooted in biases.

• Provide literal or hypothetical problems to solve. You want to see your candidate’s problem-solving abilities in action, so provide them with either a test or a set of situational questions that give them the opportunity to work out a problem.

• Visit their social media. A visit to the candidate’s social media can help you decide whether or not they are the type of persona who can be trusted to represent your company well in public.

• Observe body language. The body language of a candidate will show you how they feel about the situation. This is especially important if you are looking for someone who is personable.

• Be objective yet empathetic. You want to do your best to standardize the evaluation process because it helps remove your biases from the process. However, people are complex and cannot be reduced to a number on a spreadsheet. You need to use your empathy to connect with the candidate on a human level.

• Look for growth mindsets. Regardless of the position or industry, change is inevitable, and you should want employees who can embrace change. Someone with a growth mindset which sees opportunities in challenges and welcomes the potential of change will be more helpful to the success of your company.

Questions to Evaluate Potential Hires

There are certain questions that can be helpful in evaluating any interview candidate. They include:

• “What do you know about our company?”

• “Do you work best on a team or by yourself?’

• “How do you define success?”

• “Tell me about a time you handled conflict in a previous position.”

• “What questions do you have for me?”

Why Evaluating Job Candidates Is Important

A targeted evaluation of job candidates is important for many reasons:

• Makes the hiring process more efficient. Instead of having to start fresh each time or get caught up in distractions, a pre-arranged system of evaluation ensures your hiring process is faster, more accurate, and can be used repeatedly.

• Avoids discriminatory behavior. Having a standardized process for your evaluation adds an element of objectivity that allows you to focus on the qualifications of the candidate. This, in turn, helps reduce biases because you focus on relevant factors.

• Impacts your company. You want to hire an employee who fulfills a need and contributes to your company’s success. This includes your candidate’s ability to perform the job and work with others. An effective evaluation helps you find the best candidate possible to do just that.

• Saves time and money. A successful evaluation of candidates speeds up the hiring process without sacrificing a thorough analysis of the decision-making. When done correctly, this results in less time wasted finding candidates or hiring the wrong candidates, which results in problems down the line.

Evaluating Candidates FAQ

1. What are the five factors in evaluating candidates?

   The five factors in evaluating candidates are experience, hard skills, soft skills, cultural fit, and potential. Each of these factors indicates a level of success the candidate may have at the position.

   Skills and experience show that a candidate has the ability to perform the job responsibilities. The potential of the candidate and how they fit into your company’s culture provides a glimpse of what kind of successful impact they can contribute on your organization’s future.

2. How do you judge a good candidate?

   You want to judge a good candidate against your needs. A good candidate is one who will not only fulfill the needs of the position but adds their own special qualifications to create growth within the company.

3. How do you write a candidate evaluation?

   You write a candidate evaluation with objectivity through standardized expectations. Before you even begin to evaluate your applicants, make sure you have decided ahead of time what qualifications you seek. Keep these qualifications relevant to the position and evaluate them based on fair standards that mitigate your biases.

4. How do you evaluate candidates for soft skills?

   Evaluate a candidate’s soft skills through evidence and observation.

   The evidence can come in the form of pre-interview tests you can have the candidate take or from their answers to behavioral questions. Observe the candidate during the interview to look for glimpses into their personality, particularly in how they interact with others in a professional environment.

References

1. University of Washington – Candidate Evaluation Form Tips And Guidelines

2. Government of Vermont – Sample Rating Guides for Evaluating Applicant Interview Responses

3. University of Colorado, Boulder – Equitably Evaluating Candidates

Author

Conor McMahon

Conor McMahon is a writer for Zippia, with previous experience in the nonprofit, customer service, and technical support industries. He has a degree in Music Industry from Northeastern University and in his free time he plays guitar with his friends. Conor enjoys creative writing between his work doing professional content creation and technical documentation.