Why interview scorecards are critical in a virtual world

3 mins, 15 secs read time

We used to live in a world where you could easily gauge alignment on candidates in person. Now, with so many talent team members working remotely, it’s more important than ever to give everyone an equal opportunity to share candidate feedback just as freely and easily. It’s also vital for companies to be able to reduce bias in the hiring process, organize candidate information effectively and measure success – all while working from home. For these and many more reasons, using interview scorecards is critical.

From a “gut feeling” to being objective, fair and inclusive

Prior to Greenhouse, before I used any sort of applicant tracking system (ATS), I noticed that many hiring managers would make decisions based on “gut feelings.” Now, interview scorecards help both me and the leaders I partner with make objective, fair and inclusive hiring decisions.

Scorecards give everyone the chance to share their perspective equally. By focusing on the attributes assigned to them via a consistent and standardized method (scorecard), they can remain focused on the goal of making objective and fair observations, free of bias.

Hiring managers often believe that they have to make hiring decisions on their own, when that’s almost never the case. For example, let’s say a hiring manager wants to make a decision on a candidate based on one interview. It went so well that the hiring manager is excited to move things ahead. The use of interview scorecards will help validate this. To help review the candidates’ feedback holistically, the hiring manager and team can review every scorecard that was submitted and talk it through virtually. I’ve witnessed this process help hiring managers to see different perspectives and make their team feel heard and validated.

Reducing bias using scorecards, virtually

Tag-teaming with your hiring manager on the interview scorecard is an important activity every recruiter should do when kicking off a role. Having a space where you can participate in a live discussion (over the phone or video chat) helps create strong alignment and confidence in the process.

At Greenhouse, we’ve standardized our scorecards to include the following:

• Qualifications – Absolute must-haves to get the job done
• Interpersonal skills – The personality traits and emotional intelligence needed to be successful
• Technical skills – The knowledge, skills and abilities to perform well in the role
• Non-required attributes – Qualities that are nice-to-have but not prerequisites

The scorecard acts as a framework for making confident hiring decisions based on candidate attributes – and those assessing the attributes should include people with a diverse set of perspectives and skills, and who come from different backgrounds. Having diversity in a hiring team is essential for preventing bias from influencing decision-making.

But just as vital is the need to fully fill out the scorecards. Everyone should be able to share their overall recommendation, which helps screen for attributes that the hiring manager might have missed. Whenever scorecards aren’t filled out, you’re leaving yourself open to these risks:

• An interviewer could’ve seen a potential red flag that didn’t show up in other interviews, but was never raised because a scorecard wasn’t submitted.
• The hiring manager wasn’t able to get a sense of the candidate’s organizational skills, so they decided to pass. However, another interviewer thought they excelled in this attribute but never submitted their scorecard. Now you’ve missed out on potentially great talent and delayed the interview process.

While there may be fewer opportunities these days for us to all see each other in-person, that doesn’t mean that talent team members and hiring managers have to miss the opportunity to effectively interview and hire top talent. Interview scorecards enable everyone to assess candidates, provide opinions, track success and reduce bias – especially in today’s virtual-first environment.

Learn more about how Greenhouse scorecards enable you to make better hiring decisions with this free interview worksheet.