6 Reasons Why Job Interview Evaluation Forms Are Essential for Candidate Assessment

Publié le 21 August 2023 Par Jobillico

Get the most out of your hiring process by learning 6 reasons why job interview evaluation forms are essential for candidate assessment.

There are few more important tasks for businesses than finding the right new employees. But sometimes, having an interviewer who knows how to ask the right questions isn’t enough. When everything is said and done, you need a way of measuring each candidate’s performance. That’s where interview evaluation forms come into play.

But what exactly is an interview evaluation form? More importantly, how can it help you find the best candidate for a job role? Let’s find out!

What Is an Interview Evaluation Form?

A job interview evaluation form is a tool for rating the performance of candidates at the interview stage. A study shows that only 50% of businesses are confident that they are making the right employment choices. This makes an evaluation form a highly valuable tool when you want to be sure of your choices.

Whether you’re conducting an interview in the office or remotely using the best business phone service, you need to be sure about your hiring decisions.

Let’s look at two scenarios to show how an evaluation form helps.

Firstly, let’s look at the current situation where you don’t have an evaluation form. An applicant answers questions and then goes home. You’re faced with several problems.

If a candidate answers questions clearly and concisely, it indicates competence. But if six other candidates also answered clearly and concisely, you’re not exactly narrowing the list. If you’re not careful, you might end up employing the wrong candidate based on this limited information.

Now, let’s think about the second scenario, where you do have an evaluation form. A candidate answers questions, but this time the interviewer is filling out a form as they do so.

They can assign a score based on some or all of the following areas:

Education and training history.

Employment background.

Leadership and people skills.

Technical knowledge.

Communication and skills.

Initiative shown.

Planning and organizational skills.

Cultural fit.

Accomplishments.

Enthusiasm.

At the end of a job interview, an interviewer will have a total score to compare against other candidates. This technique is particularly handy when you can only choose a single applicant.

When picking a candidate, you can have the best possible chance of finding the right fit by using job interview evaluation forms for candidate assessment.

6 Reasons Why Interview Evaluation Forms Are Essential

As you can probably tell, interview assessment forms are extremely handy. Want proof? We’ll look at 6 reasons why job interview evaluation forms are essential for candidate assessment.

1. Find the most experienced candidate

Free-to-use image sourced from Unsplash

Experience isn’t everything, but it can help. If you need a more seasoned employee, a job interview assessment form can be useful.

This is especially the case when you have multiple candidates with lots of experience. How can you differentiate and find the best result? With an assessment form, you can produce a score based on the relevance of each applicant’s experience. This can help differentiate between a candidate who worked to grow and evolve in an organization over years, and a candidate who did not show this same commitment to professional growth.

Tip: A form alone isn’t always helpful. You need the right questions in order to dig deep and get the information you need. When it comes to experience, ask about the duties of a candidate in their previous role. For example, for a job in finance, you might ask, “What is a SOX control?” And in a tech job, you may be asking about what languages they are familiar with or experience with specific projects.

2. Gain consistency

Consistency is key to getting the best outcome in the job interview process. Unfortunately, it can also be very difficult to achieve, especially in large organizations. For example, big organizations often have multiple interviewer panels. One candidate might be interviewed by Panel A and another by Panel B.

When interviewing is complete, how can you be sure you get the best picture? After all, one panel might have a completely different opinion of what makes a strong candidate than another.

Even in small organizations, however, this can be a problem. Without a formal evaluation process, panel members could evaluate on differing criteria. They may also have varying views on the importance of individual attributes or experience.

This becomes even more pronounced if one of the panel members cannot complete a round of interviews and a new member is introduced.

These issues could have been overcome in either scenario with a simple candidate evaluation sheet. Instead of hiring based on the inconsistent opinions of staff, you can create ratings based on predefined categories. By measuring key recruitment metrics and following a thorough process, you can ensure consistency in your hiring process.

3. Reduce biases

Image sourced from tribepad.com

Interview bias is a dangerous and ever-present force for many organizations. Applicants feel they face a number of potential biases that could prevent employment. By far, the biggest concern is age bias. As many as 64% of applicants felt that their age could hold them back from a job.

Interview bias is a problem because it stops employers from getting access to the best talent. A candidate might be the most qualified. But because of subconscious bias on the part of the interviewer, they’re denied a role. Diverse businesses are more likely to succeed, so any unconscious bias must be addressed.

An interview evaluation form helps to reduce these issues. The verdict of the interviewer is based on predefined areas, which allows for a more objective assessment. To further enhance inclusivity and reduce bias, organizations can alter their recruitment processes to make sure that techniques for interviews with neurodivergent people are taken into account and incorporated.

4. Creates a clear structure

One of the biggest challenges of the hiring process is knowing exactly what to ask. Miss out on a key question, and you might not have the information you need. Without a clear structure, even the most seasoned hiring managers might miss an important question.

A job interview evaluation form, which serves as an effective assessment tool, covers all the important hiring-related areas. Factors like general background, competency, and leadership are all covered. This helps to ensure that hirers ask all the relevant questions during an interview.

When building your evaluation form, consider the factors relevant to a specific role and your wider organization. For example, suppose you’re running a data-driven business. In that case, you might choose to score on a candidate’s knowledge of data stacks for business intelligence. Or, if you are looking for a leader, you may want to ask about times when they had to manage a team in adverse situations.

5. Choose a cultural fit

Image sourced from shrm.org

Your company culture is the lifeblood of your organization. It forms the ethics and general approach of your company.

Culture is important for a variety of reasons. The right culture can send positive signals to customers, boosting loyalty. Culture can also impact employee turnover.

According to SHRM, as many as 90% of workers who rate their work culture as poor have thought about quitting.

Your employees need to be the embodiment of your organization’s culture. If you make the wrong employment choices, it can have a negative impact on your culture. This can have a negative impact on the workplace itself and the wider brand image of the company. That’s why it’s so important to verify that you are employing the right people.

An interview evaluation form ensures that culture is at the heart of the employment process. Has a candidate scored highly on several counts but low on culture? You’ll know they probably aren’t a good fit for a job.

6. Ensure the right qualifications

Sometimes, employers want to ensure that employees have specific qualifications for a role. You might need to dig even deeper when several candidates have the same qualification, including specific accreditations and educational achievements. An evaluation form helps you to identify which candidate’s qualifications are closest to your needs.

You might assign a higher score to candidates based on their answers to the following areas.

Their form of qualification (BA, MA, etc.).

The knowledge an applicant gained in education and how it can help in their career. For instance, if they’ve had experience in assessing SOX programs with Auditboard.

Extracurricular activities a candidate took part in (attending conferences, etc).

The more informed the questions you have, the more accurately you can assign scores to candidates.

Interview Evaluation FAQ

What shouldn’t be included in an evaluation form?

It’s important to be thorough in your evaluation form, but make sure you don’t stray into the wrong areas. In the worst-case scenario, a candidate could feel discriminated against. This can lead to many issues, not least the legal issues that could arise as this private information is protected by law.

When writing your evaluation form, don’t include any of the following:

Whether a candidate expects to become pregnant.

Information relating to the gender, age, sexual orientation, or religion of a candidate.

Whether a candidate intends to change their marital status.

How should you structure your evaluation form?

There is no set “rule” for evaluation forms. A typical form, however, covers the following areas:

Basic information: The name of a candidate, the name of the interviewer, and the role that’s being applied to.

Scoring criteria: What areas are important in your hiring decision? For example, experience, verbal communication, experience?

Additional information: Ensure there is space for interviewers to leave notes. Sometimes it can be useful to provide extra context or recommendations.

Where should I get my interview evaluation form?

You could create your evaluation form from scratch. This can be done with basic technological knowledge.

If you’d prefer a quicker route, plenty of free online templates are available. These can be edited to add or remove sections as needed.

Boost Your Hiring With Interview Evaluation Forms

Making smart hiring choices is key to meeting business goals. But the hiring process can be long and difficult. What’s worse, in the end, you might end up making the wrong hiring decision. Today, we’ve seen 6 reasons why interview evaluation forms are essential for candidate assessment and how even a simple one can make the process much easier.

Whether it’s improved consistency or better cultural fit, there are many benefits to using this approach. The biggest, however, is that you are much more likely to get an employee that meets your needs.

So, if you haven’t already, now’s the time to introduce job interview evaluation forms into your hiring process. Trust us, you won’t regret it.