Quick answer: Same questions, same 1 to 5, written notes, or the hire is vibes. A working interview scorecard is short: four to six criteria from the job post, a fixed 1 to 5 scale, one line of evidence per rating, a concerns box, and one hire or no-hire call. Print it on one page. Require every interviewer to submit before the debrief.
I have sat in debriefs where someone says “I just really liked her” and the room nods. That is not assessment. In my opinion the scorecard’s job is to make each interviewer commit in writing before the group starts talking.
What goes on an interview scorecard template?
Five things, nothing else:
- Criteria from the published job post (four to six)
- A 1 to 5 rating per criterion, same scale for everyone
- One line of evidence per rating
- A concerns box for what you could not assess
- One overall call, hire or no hire, plus a sentence why
No weighting formulas. No nine-point competency matrix. Every extra field is a reason a busy hiring manager closes the tab.
What does the copy-paste interview scorecard template look like?
Paste this into a doc. Duplicate it per candidate, per interview.
INTERVIEW SCORECARD
Candidate: Role:
Interviewer: Date:
SCALE
1 = well below bar 2 = below bar
3 = meets bar (write why, do not park here)
4 = above bar 5 = exceptional
Every rating needs one line of evidence.
No evidence, the rating does not count.
CRITERION 1: [from the job post]
Rating: [1-5]
Evidence:
CRITERION 2: [from the job post]
Rating: [1-5]
Evidence:
CRITERION 3: [from the job post]
Rating: [1-5]
Evidence:
CRITERION 4: [from the job post]
Rating: [1-5]
Evidence:
CONCERNS / WHAT I COULD NOT ASSESS:
OVERALL: [ ] Hire [ ] No hire
One sentence why:
Submitted before debrief? [ ] YesSame idea as a table for Notion or Google Docs:
| Criterion (from job post) | Rating 1-5 | Evidence (what they said or did) |
|---|---|---|
| Concerns / could not assess | Overall (Hire / No hire) | One sentence why |
|---|---|---|
Print it. One page. If it spills onto page two, cut a criterion.
What do the 1 to 5 anchors actually mean?
Write these at the top of the sheet so nobody invents their own scale mid-loop:
- 1, well below bar. Could not do this part of the job as described.
- 2, below bar. Some capability, real gaps against the posted requirement.
- 3, meets bar. Would do this part of the job fine. Not a shrug.
- 4, above bar. Clearly stronger than the requirement asks for.
- 5, exceptional. Top of anyone I have interviewed for this level, with a specific example.
3 is where uncertainty hides. People give a 3 when they did not probe, ran out of time, or do not want to argue. A column of 3s looks like data and contains nothing.
Make 3 expensive. Every 3 needs a written note of what “meets bar” looked like. If you genuinely do not know, leave it unrated and put it in the concerns box: “could not assess pipeline discipline, ran out of time.” Unrated is honest. A defaulted 3 cancels out the interviewers who did the work.
That drift is the same failure mode as rubric drift in candidate comparison.
What criteria should I put on the scorecard?
Take wording from the job post you already published. Not from a template library, and not from what the interviewer personally admires.
Sales rep
- Manages a pipeline without daily supervision
- Handles a price objection without discounting on the spot
- Writes a short follow-up that moves a deal
Operations / office manager
- Keeps a recurring process running when something breaks
- Chases people politely until a task is actually done
- Spots the cost or time leak in a workflow
Technical hire
- Explains a past failure and what changed after it
- Reads unfamiliar systems and asks useful questions
- Ships in small pieces rather than one large drop
Customer-facing
- Explains something complicated in plain language
Four to six. Past six, attention drops and people pattern-fill. For a worked example of criteria turned into questions, see 5 questions for hiring a sales rep. Keep criteria job-related: things you cannot ask have no place on a scorecard either (interview questions you cannot ask).
Does a scorecard actually predict anything?
Structure does. The scorecard is how structure survives a real interview.
The US Office of Personnel Management’s guidance on structured interviews says higher structure brings higher validity, higher rater reliability and agreement, and less adverse impact. Structure means rules for eliciting, observing, and evaluating responses. Fixed criteria plus a fixed scale are those rules on paper.
Schmidt and Hunter’s classic 1998 meta-analysis reported structured interviews at roughly .51 validity versus unstructured at roughly .38. Treat that as directional, not a promise about your next hire. The loose chat is still the weaker instrument, and it is the one most teams default to.
New to the idea? Start with what is a structured interview, then come back to this template.
Why not just do a culture fit chat?
Because “culture fit” usually means “I enjoyed the conversation.”
I am not against culture in principle. I am against it as evidence. An unstructured culture chat gives every interviewer different questions, no shared scale, and no written record. The debrief then runs on who talks most confidently, and you drift toward people who remind you of yourself.
If something about how people work at your company truly matters, write it as a criterion with an observable behaviour and score it 1 to 5. “Gives direct feedback without making it personal” is scoreable. “Would I get a beer with them” is not.
What are the rules that make the scorecard stick?
The template is easy. These five rules decide whether anyone fills it in:
- Criteria come from the job post. If it is not in the ad, it is not scored.
- Evidence or the rating does not count. “Strong communicator, 4” is a feeling. “Explained the migration failure in plain language, no jargon, 4” is something another interviewer can weigh.
- Submit before the debrief, or you do not vote. Ratings filled during the meeting document the room’s consensus, not your read.
- One page. The 40-row enterprise scorecard looks rigorous and nobody completes it. A printable one-pager that gets filled in beats a beautiful matrix that does not.
- Uncertainty goes in the concerns box, never into a default 3.
Rule 4 is the one I defend hardest. Every scorecard I have seen abandoned died of length, not of principle.
How do I run the debrief off these?
Collect every sheet before anyone speaks. Open on the disagreements. Criteria where everyone agreed need about ten seconds each.
Read the evidence lines on the split criteria out loud. You are comparing what the candidate said, not who is most persuasive at 5pm. If two people rated the same answer 2 and 4, one of them heard something the other missed. That is the useful minute.
A shared sheet also kills the spreadsheet stage (comparing candidates without a spreadsheet, collaborative candidate assessment). Decide shortlist size with how many candidates to interview, and filter with tight phone screen questions so you only score people worth scoring.
Where does Canvider fit around the scorecard?
This template works in a Google Doc and a printer. Bring your own scorecard. That part does not need software.
What I use Canvider for around it: park interview observations in Internal Comments on the candidate record. InterviewGen suggests questions from the profile and job after analysis, useful when you are writing the plan, not a scored scorecard screen. Decision Helper is for the end: a Rubric Scorecard and Comparison Matrix for two to four finalists (3 credits), built for the hiring meeting. It is not live per-interview interviewer ratings. CriteriaMatch is a CV pass or fail filter before interviews, not an interview rating.
The 1 to 5 scorecard is a hiring practice on paper. Canvider is where the notes live and where finalist comparison happens.
Same criteria, same 1 to 5, written evidence, submitted before anyone talks. Do that and the hire stops being vibes.
Frequently asked questions
What should an interview scorecard template include?
Four to six criteria pulled straight from the job post, a fixed 1 to 5 scale, one line of written evidence per rating, a concerns box, and one overall hire or no-hire call. It should fit on a single printed page. Anything longer gets skipped.
Should an interview scorecard use a 1 to 5 scale?
Yes, and in my opinion 1 to 5 is the practical default because most interviewers already think in it. The catch is that 3 is where uncertainty hides. Require a written note for every 3, and put real doubt in the concerns box instead of parking the rating in the middle.
Why do interview scorecards get ignored?
Two reasons. They are too long, so nobody completes them, and they are filled in during the debrief, so they record the room's consensus rather than each interviewer's own read. Keep it to one page and require submission before anyone speaks.
Do I need a different interview scorecard for every role?
Different criteria, same structure. The criteria come from the job post for that role. The 1 to 5 scale, the evidence requirement, and the final hire or no-hire call stay identical so you can compare across interviewers and across roles.