Why You Should Be Using an Interview Feedback Form

The truth of the matter is that many interviews are nonstandard and biased, hurting the company and not doing the candidate justice. In any one recruitment process, a candidate may end up consulting with multiple hiring managers for more than one interview, which span over multiple dates and times. The purpose, of course, is to ensure that everyone with a hand in the selection process can make a knowledgeable choice.

If you’re interested to see how you can acquire well-rounded insight and select the best candidate from a pool of applicants while eliminating bias, then getting interview feedback could help you out. Keep reading to see how a simple form could do just that.

What Is an Interview Feedback Form?

During the interviewing process, questions may vary candidate to candidate. It may manifest in asking one person a question, but not presenting that same question to a different applicant. This robs the company of a potentially valuable answer and also robs that second candidate of a fair chance. It could also be as simple as not asking a question the same way twice, leaving it up to interpretation and exploring unbalanced depths of it between candidates.

This is where bias surfaces. This is also where a simple interview feedback form could help you standardize your methods while taking subjectivity out of the picture.

The form is a way for conductors to measure candidate interview feedback, which can then be used by the hiring company to ensure every interview is conducted in the same way. It creates a set of guidelines for hiring managers to adhere to, making their training easier, and balancing the chances for every candidate by eliminating unconscious bias.

How to Make an Interview Feedback Form

To standardize your interviews, it makes sense to standardize the feedback form going with it, right? To do that, here are some things you should include:

• Standard Details: The name of the person(s) conducting the interview and the candidate for potential hire should be recorded at the top of every candidate interview feedback form.
• Position Applied: For additional organizational purposes and bookkeeping, the role(s) for which the candidate is applying for should be listed along with what stage in the interviewing process they’re at.
• Values: Be sure to include a spot for the things your company values knowing about 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, include it. Each value should allow for some kind of measurement. For example, a scale of 1-5 can be used for a hiring manager to rate whether a candidate’s information aligns with the needs of the position, with room for an explanation. Explanations are key with any judgement call—this keeps the following decision-making process objective.
• Status: By the end of an interview, hiring managers will have an impression whether a candidate could be suitable for the position - or on whether further engagement with the candidate could be beneficial before making a decision. These impressions should be listed and explained for all stakeholders to see and understand.

Why You Should Use an Interview Feedback Form

Realistically, not everyone can be there to interview every single candidate - but that doesn’t mean stakeholders responsible for who is and who isn’t hired can’t all be on the same page. Interview feedback forms can aid in letting everyone in on a candidate’s suitability for the position, by ensuring the same information comes back to the group every time.

This process is made objective by taking a hiring manager’s impressions and linking reason to it. Rather than taking their recommendations for what they are, you’re asking them to justify their reasoning by turning “they’re unfit for this position,” into “they’re unfit for this position because…” This interview feedback can then be used to make a collective, unbiased decision moving forward.

How to Use an Interview Feedback Form

Toward the end of this article, we’ll prompt you with an example feedback form. You can use it to create something similar, or perhaps you can veer off and make a form totally from scratch. But in the meantime, let’s talk about how you can use it.

After your candidate interview feedback form is produced, it would then be used by hiring managers to bring structure to their delivery of the interview. It would accompany hiring managers to the interview and provide them with items in need of being accomplished with every candidate.

Time spent training hiring managers would be cut by the convenience of having this form present with them—think of it as a walkthrough. The steps are stated clearly there for them to follow, relieving the company of some of the cost. In turn, their interviews are conducted with structure. Inform your hiring staff of the need to think consciously about each of the ratings and written sections.

Those reviewing the forms should be able to have a feel for the candidate and their qualifications while looking over the interview feedback form. Their evaluation should include picking up on biased terminology, which is easier when every impression is justified and reasoned.

Best Practices for Interview Feedback

The documentation of interviews should be recorded clearly and specifically. Details matter. The saying, “because I said so” doesn’t have a place in the production, use, or evaluation of interview feedback forms. Their intended use is to elaborate on the conductor’s impressions and recommendations to give other members of hiring management teams as specific an understanding of the experience as if they were conducting it themselves.

When justifying their recommendations to reject someone, or hold someone in the hiring process, or push someone forward, it’s important to bring attention to specific instances, skills, and behaviors, then draw connections with the use of the form.

Sample Interview Feedback Form

Lastly, you are not expected by the conclusion of this article to do it alone. Creating an interview feedback form from scratch can feel suspenseful and intimidating. Rest assured, there are sources that can assist in drawing inspiration from something practical to create something unique that highlights your own company’s virtues.