What is an interview rubric?
An interview rubric, also referred to as a hiring scorecard or scoring sheet, serves as a rating tool to evaluate job-relevant competencies during an interview. Rubrics provide role-specific criteria for interviewers to assess, along with a shared concrete frame of reference for what makes up a quality response.
Rubrics encourage evidence gathering by providing interviewers with a structured approach to match a candidate’s response to detailed criteria about the competency required for the role.
To learn more about Indeed’s interview rubrics and join the pilot, reach out to your sales representative.
Related: Best Interview Questions to Ask Candidates
Why use an interview rubric?
Interview rubrics provide a host of benefits for both interviewers and interviewees. By shifting away from unstructured interviews, employers can look forward to the following advantages in the hiring process:
Fairness: Rubrics can reduce bias during the interview process by creating a structured approach for gathering data to make accurate and fair hiring decisions. Compared to unstructured interviews, structured interviews that evaluate job-relevant competencies and use thoughtful rating tools may result in more objective ratings that are not influenced by interviewers’ and candidates’ demographics.
For example, a study across multiple schools showed that bias was largest for teachers in racially diverse schools. However, there was no evidence of racial bias when teachers used a rubric with more clearly defined evaluation criteria.
Quality: Rubrics can help employers select candidates aligned to on-the-job success. Structured hiring processes increase the chances of hiring a better candidate by up to 15% than traditional, unstructured interviews.
Efficiency: Rubrics can help you save time by streamlining the evaluation process, making it easier to compare candidates and identify the most qualified candidates quickly.
Related: How to Conduct Structured Interviews With Indeed’s Interview Guides
4 key components to include in a rubric for interviews
While interview rubrics can vary from company to company, consider including the following four key components to give candidates an even playing field and help ensure objectivity in the interviewing process.
- Competencies necessary for the role. A competency refers to the specific expertise, proficiency and aptitude required to successfully perform a specific job. Competencies can come in the form of knowledge, skills or abilities. Examples include: building relationships, accountability, teamwork, mechanical knowledge, decision-making and customer service.
- Structured interview questions. For each competency, interviewers should consider asking the same interview question. Behavioral questions give candidates the opportunity to demonstrate competency. If the candidate does not have direct experience, ask the questions in a hypothetical way.
- Rating scale for performance. Rating scales, also known as quality anchor words, are descriptive labels to indicate performance level. Examples include: proficient, developing and underdeveloped.
- Examples or descriptions of evidence for the rating scale. Performance quality should be defined for each rating level. This gives interviewers a concrete reference for what constitutes a “proficient” response compared to “developing” and “underdeveloped.”
What does an interview rubric look like?
Interview rubrics are often formulated on spreadsheets, with columns and rows for organizing information. But to facilitate the use of interview rubrics, Indeed formulated an easy-to-use online tool for employers through Indeed’s Hiring Platform (IHP). When employers conduct virtual interviews using IHP, a role-specific rubric will appear on the screen. This rubric provides interviewers with industry-aligned competencies to evaluate, along with an interview question and rating scale to more objectively assess the candidate’s response.
To learn more about this functionality and join the pilot, reach out to your sales representative.
Related: How To Conduct a Job Interview
How to use a rubric in your interviews
To best use a rubric in your interview, start by developing interview questions that assess the competencies determined for the job. Interviewers should then review the rubric to ensure they understand the various competencies and rating scales determined for the role prior to interviewing candidates.
During the interview, interviewers should ask the same predetermined interview question to each candidate for each competency. Examples of competency-based questions include the following:
- Describe a time you have completed a difficult task as part of a team. What did you do and what were the results?
- How have you handled negative feedback from a manager or coworker in the past?
- Describe a difficult situation you had to resolve resourcefully.
After asking the pre-set questions, interviewers then match the candidate’s response to the description of evidence in the rating scale to determine which level the jobseeker is at for each competency.
Finally, after reviewing the rubrics, interviewers should make objective decisions on whether to move forward with a candidate based on how they scored the candidate using the rubric.
