All About Interview Rating Sheets

Interview Rating Sheets – Why and How You Should Be Using Them

When interviews are unstandardized, it leaves plenty of room for bias—this is usually an unconscious happening, but the occurrence of it hurts the company and doesn’t do justice to the candidate participating in the process. Methods could vary from interview to interview, whether they’re conducted by many different individuals or even by the same person. With it, the questions might change. Impressions could differ, but not by fair means. While it isn’t intentional, it makes for a process that doesn’t offer every candidate the same opportunity. Unfortunately, many interviews fall victim to this lack of structure.

There is still time to improve, though, and all it takes are a few simple changes. An interview score sheet or rating sheet could help you eliminate bias from your hiring process and provide the interview with a structure that your candidates will recognize and appreciate. If you want to see how you can give them the same chance as everyone else, keep reading.

What Is an Interview Rating Sheet?

An interview rating sheet is used by the person(s) conducting the interview and scores a candidate’s qualifications for the position in need of filling. You might ask how a simple interview sheet could eliminate bias, and the answer is consistency.

The categories and prospective ratings bring uniformity to every sheet that is utilized in an interview. It eliminates personal bias and opinions, which don’t have a place in the hiring process. To give you an idea of what this might look like, the person conducting the interview could ask one candidate a question but fail to ask the same question to the second candidate. Maybe the second candidate is precisely what you’re looking for, but because they’ve been robbed of the chance to answer the telling question - you’ll never know.

Evaluating candidates and making decisions should be objective. Keeping things uniform and consistently gives your company the best chance, too, in finding the right person for the job. Asking recruiters not to be biased would be a feat, considering it isn’t usually intentional. That’s how interview rating sheets can help.

How to Create an Interview Rating Sheet

These interview sheets can help standardize your interviews from candidate to candidate, but before you can implement them, you need to know how they’re made. Here are a few things to consider as you construct yours:

• Standard Details: Every interview rating sheet should include the name of the person(s) conducting the interview and the candidate for potential hire. A pile of unmarked interview sheets isn’t going to benefit you trying to decide who you should hire or the candidates trying for the job.
• Position Applied: For additional organizational purposes and bookkeeping, the role(s) for which the candidate is applying should be listed as well as what stage in the interviewing process they’re at. This allows for reliable reference and ease of decision making when the time comes to evaluate all the candidates.
• Values: The items being rated should align with what your company values in a prospective candidate. Typically, this is education, experience, certifications, and proficiency in relevant skills, but what’s important isn’t limited to these categories. If there’s anything else your company would consider before hiring someone to join the team, include it.
• Measurements: Don’t call all the shots yourself. When deciding what points are worth extenuating on the interview rating sheet, reach out to your team and try to gain perspective from a diverse group of people. This will keep your criteria relevant and potentially uncover aspects of the position you might not have thought of yourself.
• Clarity: Anticipate confusion and aid it where you can. If your rating system consists of scores 1 through 5, be sure to specify which end of the spectrum is poor and which is excellent. Confusion here could be costly if every recruiter understood the interview sheets differently. Get everyone on the same page by being explicit in the way it works.
• Comments: Allot room for additional commentary to follow every one of the measured ratings. This is space for your recruiters and hiring managers to expand on whether a candidate’s information aligns with the needs of the position and your company’s values. Explanations can help stakeholders see that judgment calls are being kept objective.

By the end of an interview, the person conducting it will have an impression of whether a candidate is suitable or unsuitable for the position or determine the need for further engagement before a decision is made. A space for commentary is where these impressions will be explored to bring all decision-makers to the same page.

Sample Interview Rating Sheet

Creating an interview rating sheet from scratch can be daunting, but you aren’t in it alone. There are plenty of examples floating around from which you can draw inspiration to create something practical and unique for your company and its virtues.

Use this article and existing examples as a guide for constructing your own interview rating sheets - and enjoy eliminating bias with your new and improved standardized interviews.