A Guide to Building Interview Rubrics
Interview rubrics are one of the most underutilized yet powerful tools in Talent Acquisition. By providing a structured framework for evaluating candidates, they create clarity, consistency, and equity in the hiring process. Let’s explore what interview rubrics are, why they’re important, how to use them effectively, and the benefits they bring to both the organization and Talent leaders.
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What Are Interview Rubrics?
Interview rubrics are structured candidate evaluation tools that break down the specific competencies and qualifications required for a role. These requirements map to a yes/no framework that guides interviewers in assessing candidates objectively. Interviewers are trained on the rubric to ensure they understand how to assess each competency consistently. During interviews, interviewers score candidates based on observable behaviors and responses, creating a data-driven foundation for post-interview discussions and hiring decisions.
Rubrics are made up of 3-5 main competencies that are determined during the intake session with the hiring manager. They'll often include a universal competency (think Amazon's bar raiser rubric) that has a universal measurement for qualifications like company culture, or candidate quality. We'll cover universal competencies in later articles, as they are critical to aligning multi-interviewer assessment feedback to the established "yes criteria" for qualifications that may allow for subjective interpretation.
Why Are They Important?
Interview rubrics are critical for creating equity and objectivity in the hiring process. They align every interview participant to an objective set of truths that lead to a hiring decision. Without rubrics, interviewer bias and inconsistencies can creep into evaluations, leading to poor hiring decisions and negative candidate experiences. Rubrics also help ensure that the hiring process aligns with organizational values and goals, making it easier to identify the best candidates for both the role and the company culture.
Using Interview Rubrics in Practice
Competencies from Intake Session: Creating the interview rubric necessitates a best in class intake session. Read our intake session 101 blog post here. This process will enable you to identify the core competencies that you can then align to each step in the interview process.
Competencies/Sub-Competencies Aligned to the Job Description: Key competencies in the rubric should match the job description, ensuring that candidates have clear, consistent understanding and expectations about the job requirements from the job posting, through to the interview process, and ultimately through to their employment.
One Competencies per Interviewer: Create a unique interviewing experience for every candidate, while making it easy for interviewers to dive deep into a specialized area for each interview.
The Benefits to the Organization
Improved Funnel Conversion Rates: There are less rejections in the mid to late stages of the interview funnel, because the interview rubric aligns the recruiter to the hiring manager, and the hiring manager to the hiring team. Read our funnel conversion rates blog here.
Reduced Time to Fill: When the hiring team is aligned on the target, you can identify and move candidates through the interview process more effectively and efficiently rather than when the hiring process is used to determine what you're looking for in the candidate.
Faster Interviewer Training: When individually focused interviews are built around specific competencies and a strong yes/no framework, it's easy to train interviewers on evaluating candidates. This makes it easier to scale "good interviewers", and reduces the time to fill, and the burden of interviewing on specific employees.
Streamlined Debrief Sessions: Debrief sessions are dynamic and each interviewer brings a unique perspective to the conversation. Rather than debating opinions on one competency (whether defined or not) or other abstract/subjective measures (i.e. "the culture fit"), you are able to achieve a focused debrief session on an agreed upon set of competencies and hiring teams can use debrief sessions to productively debate tradeoffs in skills.
**Structured Candidate Feedback: Candidates that made it through the entire process, deserve good feedback. A strong interview rubric enables you to deliver job-related feedback that led to the decision, without it being a difficult conversation.
Interview rubrics are a core part of making better hiring decisions, improving the hiring team’s experience and efficiency, as well as overall candidate? interview performance.
The Benefits for a Talent Leader
For Talent leaders, the interview rubric is a process that helps them confidently manage the recruiting cycle. The process creates objectivity around candidate interview performance so they can better diagnose problems in the recruiting cycle.
With a consistent framework that Talent leaders can use to coach hiring managers and interviewers, there is improved alignment and reduced friction in the hiring process. Interview rubrics are more than just a tool—they’re a strategy for transforming the hiring process. By adopting them, Talent leaders can drive consistency, equity, and efficiency; building a foundation for long-term success.