One of the fundamental problems with interviewing multiple candidates for a particular role within an organization is that choosing between the different candidates is very subjective. The reason for this is that as humans we have many different psychological biases built in to how our brains work.
A technique that I’ve found very useful to keep it objective is to use a score card for each candidate, which I’m calling the Job Candidate Score Card. This card is very simple, recording just key information for each candidate against set criteria. An example of a Job Candidate Score Card is below:
Before we examine the score card there are a couple of things to note. Firstly, that this scoring card will not remove all bias, it merely helps you to keep your interview assessment more objective. Secondly, to get the most out of the score card I’d recommend asking the same set of interview questions to each candidate.
As you can see above, the broad categories we are searching for are listed in the left-hand column. We also have a column for the attributes the candidate “must have”, that is, those attributes we see as the minimum requirements for doing the job. Additionally, there is a column for “nice to have” attributes. These are attributes which are not essential but which would really make a candidate stand out of they were in possession of them.
You can add or remove broad categories to the score card to reflect what you’re looking for. One of the advantages of this score card is that it is very simple and easy to understand, yet it is also very effective at pulling out the essential attributes of each candidate. An example of a completed card is shown below:
As you can see the above example is very simply but it paints a vivid picture of the skills required to perform the job.
Once you have a set of score cards for all of your candidates it should be relatively easy to sift through them and select the best candidates to take forward to the next stage. When you’re filling in the score card you can either simply tick each requirement a candidate has, or, if you want to be a bit more granular you can score each requirement out of 10.
If you do use this score card as part of your recruitment process then do write in and let me know if it helped.
