Dr John Sullivan Talent Management Thought Leadership
I estimate that an interview scoresheet can boost your hiring results by 40%. This amazing level of improvement is possible because interviewing is by far the most heavily weighted and impactful of all candidate assessment steps. This means that any major mistake during the interview process will severely reduce the accuracy of your candidate assessment.
The research data clearly shows that the accuracy of all interviews improves dramatically when you shift from unstructured to structured interviews. Adding structure makes a difference because data shows that without structure, a minuscule 9% of the factors that predict whether a new hire will perform are actually covered during an average interview.
So, the addition of this no-cost scorecard helps ensure that 100% of these essential job requirements are covered during the interview. Each essential job requirement is also later consistently assessed with your interview scoresheet.
Why Should You Implement This Practice? Here Are The Many Benefits Of Adding An Interview Scoresheet (IS)
Obviously, in today’s “do more with less” world, it’s essential to present a compelling business case for every proposed change in the recruiting process. In your business case for implementing an interview scorecard, I recommend covering each of the following top 6 benefits and estimating the dollar value of each.
You will hire better performers because your interviewers will be laser-focused on exclusively evaluating job-related factors – flawed and unstructured interviews are the primary reason why “companies only choose the candidate with the right talent for the job 18% of the time.” A primary reason for failing to select the most talented candidate is because so many managers utilize unstructured interviews. Which (as Google found) can have a lower predictive value than a coin flip because they allow hiring managers to assess a candidate using any number of questionable evaluation factors and tools, including many non-job-related ones. However, when you require the use of an interview scoresheet, every interviewer will know in advance what evaluation factors they will have to rate. As a result, most interviewers will now restrict their interview plans, interview preparations, and interview questions to the approved job-related evaluation factors listed in the scoresheet. This new laser focus, coupled with the complete elimination of nonjob-related assessment factors, will dramatically improve the accuracy of your candidate selection. In turn, this results in a measurable increase in higher-performing new hires. It will also result in a reduction of the extremely costly new hire failure rate, which is sadly at 46%.
Side-by-side comparisons will be much easier, so the selection of the top finalist will be more accurate – managers seldom want to select the best candidate in isolation. Instead, they want to make their choice after comparing several candidates side-by-side. Unfortunately, that’s extremely difficult to do under most interview processes. Primarily because most interviews are never formally documented, that means that hiring managers will have to rely on their memory in order to compare candidates whose interviews were far apart. Cross-candidate comparisons are also made more difficult when each of your candidates has been evaluated using a completely different set of assessment factors. As an added benefit, the existence of a scoresheet and the use of video to record each interview will allow the hiring manager (and anyone who missed the live interview) to refresh their memory. They can review the evaluations of any candidate at any time. And with easier side-by-side comparisons, your hiring decisions will now be more accurate.
Your offer acceptance rate will improve because adding the scoresheet will speed up your hiring – because fast hiring allows a company to close the best candidates long before they receive an offer from your competitors. It’s important to realize that many elements of the IS process will help to minimize roadblocks that slow down hiring. For example, resume screening can now be completed faster because resume screener will now be able to narrow their search for information on entered resumes that are directly related to the small number of factors listed on the scoresheet. Many also find that their interviews become streamlined and go faster because they now only cover the factors listed on the scoresheet. Selecting finalist interview slates and the final candidate will go much faster. There will be no need to discuss among interviewers which weighted factors should be used to make those selections. Finally, your offer acceptance rate may be further improved when your candidates are more willing to say yes after they have experienced the objectivist and the fairness of your interview process.
Both your candidate assessment and selling will dramatically improve when you only assign your best interviewers to critical jobs – because the IS process requires each interviewer to rate each finalist with a single number. After experiencing a dramatic hiring success or failure, having that single number for each interviewer allows your TA staff to revisit candidate scoring to determine which interviewers and hiring managers most accurately rated the hired candidate. Obviously, those interviewers who consistently had the most accurate ratings should be the first to be assigned to interview for critical positions in this job family. Those with highly inaccurate ratings should either be retrained or not be allowed to participate in future interviews.
Your diverse hiring will improve when you only use objective assessment factors – many diverse candidates are harmed when hiring managers and interviewers use questionable or discriminatory factors for evaluating the best candidates. This is much less likely to happen when you use an interview scoresheet. All of the evaluation factors on that scoresheet must be pre-approved as job-related. Using only objective evaluation criteria will likely also limit the number of unconscious biases that creep into your hiring process. So, using the sheet will help to minimize discrimination and can be used to identify the interviewers that consistently under-rate diverse candidates.
Expect only a minimum amount of internal resistance when you add an interview scoresheet – it’s, unfortunately, true that most hiring managers and many recruiters instantly resist any suggested major change in your hiring process. However, you are less likely to face resistance when you add an evaluation sheet. Adding it at the end of the interview step leaves the rest of the hiring process untouched. And I have found that if you frame this addition as a documentation requirement. You will dramatically reduce any resistance to this addition. You will also likely encounter little resistance because no budget dollars or HR approvals are required to develop and add this sheet to your process. It’s only a single sheet, it’s easy to understand, and it doesn’t take much time to complete. If you really want to be transparent, show it to your candidates. It will reduce their anxiety while letting them know precisely what you are looking for during your interviews.
Two Examples Of Interview Scoresheets
There are two basic types of interview scoresheets: the most common version and the first sample, which appears below, only cover the job requirements (i.e., experience, education, and skills). The second version of the evaluation sheet covers only the questions asked during the interview.
Each interviewer is required to complete the scoresheet within 15 minutes after the interview has ended. Each evaluation factor on the sheet is weighted (meaning that each factor carries a different number of total points). Both sheets list the minimum passing score that a candidate must receive before they can move on to the next step.
The Skills-Based Scoresheet – a sample scoresheet to cover experience, education and skills
The Interview Question Scoresheet – this alternative scoresheet covers each of the job-related interview questions that were asked during the interview.
My Recommended Action Step
Developing and using an interview scoresheet is so intuitive. It’s quick and easy to demonstrate its impact. I suggest you provide your skeptics with proof of concept. Quickly put together a skills-based scoresheet for one of your high-volume jobs. After using it for a month or two, survey your interviewers in order to determine whether using it has caused them to narrow what they cover during their interviews to the objective factors that are listed on the scoresheet for that job. Also, ask them if the sheet has made candidate comparisons much easier.
Note for the reader
This is the latest article from Dr. Sullivan, who was called “the Michael Jordan of Hiring” by Fast Company.Please help spread these ideas by sharing them with your team/network and by posting them on your favorite social media.
