How to use Interview Scorecards
Anyone involved in recruitment – be it as a line manager or HR professional – will appreciate the importance of having a fair and structured interview process. As part of this process many employers like to use an Interview Scorecard to assess candidates against the required competencies/experience/attributes required for a job vacancy.
What is an Interview Scorecard?
An interview scorecard is a pre-determined set of criteria which is set against the required competencies, experiences and attributes for a job vacancy. Everyone involved in the hiring process will complete a scorecard and results will usually be pooled to create an average score for each candidate for each given criteria.
Why use an Interview Scorecard?
Interview scorecards can help you eliminate personal bias and unconscious bias from your interview process. They help focus the interviewer on the requirements of the job. Additionally they provide a controlled way of assessing all candidates fairly. Scorecards are particularly useful if you have an interview panel – each panel member completes their own card and then results can be pooled and average scores calculated. Another benefit is that if you have a number of stages to your interview process you can compare a candidate’s scores for various stages and check for consistency (or inconsistency) in their performance.
How to create your Interview Scorecard
Define the criteria you wish to assess your candidates against
Your candidate criteria will be a combination of skills, experience, aptitudes and competencies. See our advice on drawing up candidate criteria for Sales Jobs and Marketing Jobs.
Prepare your interview questions
For each of your chosen candidate criteria aim to have at least 1 interview question to explore the candidates’ abilities.
What else do you want to score on?
As well as your interview questions you may also want to score your candidate on non-verbal elements for example – their non-verbal queues, hand-shake, eye contact or dress..You may want to ‘weight’ each criteria according to how important they are. For example certain skills may be vital for the role so would be weighted highly, whilst others could be ‘nice to have’ so would be weighted lower.
Create a defined scoring system
It’s very important to clearly define what each score level represents and then ensure that all members of the interview panel understand what each score means. I’d recommend keeping your scoring scale to say 1-5 rather than 1-10. Then you should define what each score indicates, for example:
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Select the format of your scorecard
Try and keep this as simple and user friendly as possible. Ensure it allows each interviewer to clearly score each individual. Consider an additional column for notes / comments.
CLICK HERE to access a free scorecard template to download.
This article on Interview Scorecards was originally posted on Copeland Automotive Recruitment where you will also find several useful resources to build a team for your Automotive Business
About Julia Pennington
Julia is Managing Director of Copeland Automotive Recruitment - UK automotive industry recruiters who help enhance your business performance. Finding you industry expert candidates and reducing your hiring times - focusing on quality over quantity.
We recruit mid to senior level sales, marketing and operations roles covering 5 employer sectors: Vehicle Manufacturers, Automotive Fleet & Financial Services, Marketing Agencies, Automotive Suppliers and Dealers.
We have over 20 years' experience in automotive recruitment allowing us to give expert advice on jobs, salaries and market trends. Learn more by downloading your complimentary copy of our Automotive Industry Salary Guide
Ready to Talk? Get in touch: julia@copelandselect.co.uk or 07973 286342