How to record Job Applicant Interview results

Hiring the right person is crucial for your team’s success. Without a structured approach to evaluating candidates, unconscious biases can creep in, leading to suboptimal hiring decisions. By capturing detailed impressions during the interview process, you can make data-driven choices that benefit your organization.

For instance, the “like me” bias can influence hiring decisions. We all have gut feelings about people, and it’s natural to connect with some candidates more than others. However, relying solely on intuition can lead to hiring mistakes. A structured interview process helps you balance your gut instinct with objective data. By capturing detailed notes and using consistent and defined evaluation criteria, you can make more informed and unbiased hiring decisions.

The downloadable template (below) helps you gather precise feedback from candidates, ensuring their qualifications, experience, and job approach align perfectly with the job’s needs. Avoid making decisions about whether or not to hire a person during the interview. Instead, focus on gathering the relevant data needed to make those decisions. Using a structured interview record can go a long way toward helping you do just that.

To customize the template for your particular vacancy look at the first column and compare it with the job profile – what do you really need this person to be good at and have proven experience in? Capture those areas in the first column. Ask all of the job applicants the same questions and rate their answers in the second column – either during the interview or just after the interview to ensure the responses are still clear in your mind.

Tips:

• If you don’t have enough time to cover all of the job profile areas that you would like to gather data on, consult with other interviewers and suggest that perhaps they start at the bottom of the page and work their way upwards.
• Have all interviewers use the same interview record sheet to ensure a consistent process of gathering data in specific critical job performance areas for the vacancy you have.
• When you are ready to evaluate the job applicants based on interview results be sure to look at the written scores and do not be tempted into changing scores during the discussion. The objective is not to make any interviewer’s scores “wrong” or “right” but to understand why any interviewers found some responses less credible in critical areas.
• If you truly want to move away from any possible biases consider asking the Hiring Manager to only specify the critical job performance areas which is then captured in the job profile. Then ask a different manager (or groups of managers) to interview and select the job applicant to hire for the vacancy.