Interview Scoring And Candidate Evaluation [Employer Guide]

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Interviews are great ways to learn about job candidates, but it can be difficult to keep them all straight when you have more than one of them. It can also be difficult to decide who to hire when you have multiple people conducting interviews and evaluating candidates.

To help with this, many hiring managers choose to use interview rating systems to score candidates’ qualifications and answers. In this article, we’ll explain what this looks like and give you instructions and an example of how to make a candidate scoring sheet for your next round of interviews.

Key Takeaways:

• Interview scoring helps keep interviewers on track and streamlines the hiring process.

• Get input from a wide variety of people related to the position when putting together your candidate interview scoring sheet.

• Using interview rating systems can make interviews more impersonal and can limit what candidates are able to share.

How Do You Rate Candidates In Their Job Interviews?

An interview rating scale can help you rate candidates in their job interviews. This scale also called an interview scoring sheet, allows you and your other interviewers to rank candidates’ answers, skills, and levels of experience so you can compare them against each other.

Using a tool like this also makes it easier for you and other interviewers to discuss your thoughts about each candidate after their interviews. Not only does it help you remember what each candidate said, but it also helps you compare apples to apples when you’re talking about each candidate.

Why Should You Rate Candidates’ Job Interviews?

Interviews are designed to help you narrow your list of job candidates, and an interview rating system can help you do this more effectively by focusing your interview, clarifying your reasons for choosing a particular candidate, and making it easier to compare notes.

• Using a rating scale focuses your interview. When you’ve created a list of criteria that are important for a job candidate to have, it helps you focus your interview questions. Otherwise, you run the risk of talking too much about things that don’t matter to the position.

• Using a rating scale gives you concrete reasons for choosing a candidate. Whether you need these for convincing the rest of your team, your boss, or yourself why someone is the best candidate, using a rating scale of some kind helps streamline the interview process.

• Using a rating scale helps you compare notes. Chances are, you aren’t the only one conducting interviews and deciding on a job candidate. Having a rating sheet makes it easier for your whole team to discuss their observations about candidates’ key skills and qualifications.

How to Make a Candidate Interview Scoring Sheet

There are a wide variety of methods for creating an interview rating sheet, but usually, the best ones have interview questions, a rating system, and sections for notetaking.

1. Establish your requirements and wishlists. As a hiring team, sit down and decide what skills and other qualifications you’re looking for in a candidate. Most of these will already be in the job description, but there may be some more specific ones like, “Must be able to handle talking with angry customers on the phone.”

   Make sure you give everyone a chance to provide input. You may even consider asking the future employee’s coworkers what they’d like to see on the list – after all, they’re going to be the ones working with the new employee.

2. Create a list of interview questions. Based on the list of qualifications you just made, start putting together your interview questions. You can use a list of common interview questions to do this, but also include original questions that are specific to the position.

   Situational interview questions can also be key to finding out about a candidate’s soft skills or the extent of their technical expertise.

3. Create a clear scoring system. If you just say, “Rate the candidate on a scale of one to three for each skill,” you’ll have some people use one as the best and some use three as the best. To avoid confusion, be very clear about how the scale works.

   Once you’ve established your system, put the scoring options next to each question or group of questions so that interviewers can rate candidates’ answers and qualifications.

4. Create space for and encourage interviewers to write down comments. Along with the scoring system, leave room next to each question for interviewers to take notes. Here, they can add caveats to their score, other interesting things the candidate shared, and their overall impressions of the candidate.

Example Interview Scoring Sheet

The Pros and Cons of Using an Interview Scoring Sheet

Most processes and strategies have strengths and weaknesses, and interview scoring sheets are no different.

Pros:

• Using scoring sheets minimizes the potential for bias. When you have set criteria that you’re looking for a candidate to meet, you’re much less likely to hire someone just because they share your affinity for ice hockey. You’ll also have a record to go back to in case someone tries to say you were biased in your decision-making.

• Using scoring sheets streamlines the interview process. When all of your interviewers are asking questions and taking notes on the same things, it makes the decision-making process much easier. Otherwise, you’re bound to all focus on different qualities and skills and not have the same information for each candidate.

• Using scoring sheets creates a record. Whether you just need to keep all of the candidates straight or need to give your manager reasons why you’ve chosen this particular person to hire, an interview scoring sheet doubles as a valuable record.

Cons:

• Using scoring sheets can make interviews less conversational. If interviewers have to continually score candidates on every answer they give, it makes it more difficult for interviewers to make eye contact with candidates as they talk or follow up with additional questions or comments.

• Using scoring sheets can limit the amount of information gathered. Interview scoring sheets often come with preset questions and not a lot of time to follow rabbit trails or ask follow-up questions.

  As a result, hiring managers may walk away from interviews having only seen the tip of the iceberg when it comes to a candidate’s qualifications.

• Using scoring sheets can make the hiring process too scientific. If hiring teams stick too closely to the scorecard results, they may miss out on an excellent candidate who is missing a few trainable skills in favor of a mediocre candidate who technically checks all the boxes but isn’t a pleasant person to work with.

Candidate/Interview Scoring FAQ

1. How are performance-based interviews scored?

   Performance-based interviews are scored using suggested responses to the preset list of interview questions. For example, the suggested responses to a question about time management might be;

   1 – “I don’t keep a calendar – I just roll with the punches and see what happens every day.”

   2 – “I keep a calendar, but I keep my to-do list in my head.”

   3 – “I keep a monthly and weekly calendar, and a to-do list that I prioritize based on what needs to get done today, this week, or whenever time allows.”

2. What is a rating scale in an interview?

   A rating scale in an interview is a tool used by hiring managers to gauge a candidate’s qualifications and expertise. Interviewers set up a standard scoring scale for all interviewers to use for every candidate so that they can get a feel for what each one brings to the table.

3. How do you score a candidate for an interview?

   You score a candidate for an interview by creating a rating system and a set list of questions. Usually, these rating systems are number scales and they’re attached to each question (or set of questions) asked in the interview.

   As you ask questions, you can rate the candidate’s response. For example, if you learned that a candidate was highly experienced in a software program used in the position, you’d give them the highest rating on the scale in that area.

References

1. SHRM – Template: Rating and Scoring Behavioral Interview Questions

2. CareerOneStop – Common Interview Questions

Author

Caitlin Mazur

Caitlin Mazur is a freelance writer at Zippia where she has written 140+ articles that have reached over 1 mil viewers as of June 2023. Caitlin is passionate about helping Zippia’s readers land the jobs of their dreams by offering content that discusses job-seeking advice based on experience and extensive research.