Know the Score on Your Candidates

Marcianne Kuethen

October 17, 2012

When making a new hire, does your hiring process have a scoring system to equally compare all your candidates? If not, you may find it too easy to go with your instincts and make a quick decision without considering all the data on your candidates. Without a scoring system, 3 different hiring managers at your company might choose 3 different candidates, depending on whom they identified with the most.

Though hiring is a crucial business function, conventional methods are remarkably short on rigor, experts say. Depending on who decides, what gets candidates hired can vary wildly—from academic achievement to work experience to appearance. Managers who go with their gut might get it right sometimes, but their hunches generally have little value in predicting how someone will perform on the job. Companies peddling a statistical approach to hiring say they can improve results by reducing the influence of a manager’s biases.*

At Amtec, we highly recommend that hiring managers use a scoring system to ensure that each candidate is asked the same questions. (We’ve created our own unique system, and it’s highly successful.) After all, you’re not just screening for how qualified they are—you want to make sure they fit the position and your company culture. It’s necessary to generate a complete picture for each candidate to hold up alongside the others’. Besides helping you “compare apples to apples” on each candidate, a scoring system keeps your interview process legal, protecting you from being accused of discriminating against certain candidates who don’t get the job.

Here’s an example of a scoring system:

0 = No answer or poor performance – an answer which is not relevant to the question or lacks any content

1 = Answer is factually incorrect – incorrect or inadequate answer

2 = Insufficient answer – a response has some relevance but was rather superficial and did not show any depth of understanding

3 = Adequate answer – response was relevant to the question and demonstrated some understanding

4 = Good answer – a response which demonstrated a good understanding and knowledge

5 = Excellent answer – a full and detailed answer which demonstrates an in-depth knowledge and understanding of the subject

*To read more about a statistical approach to hiring, click here. (Article originally published on finance.yahoo.com by Joseph Walker.)