Interview Notes and Scorecard Template
An interview notes and scorecard template for hiring: rate each competency only on evidence from the interview, then note strengths, concerns and a recommendation. Job-related notes only. Download it free in Word or PDF, no sign-up, with an example below.
Free. No sign-up.
Dalm is a Mac app in private beta. Get early access
Interview notes structured as a scorecard keep a hiring decision tied to what actually happened in the room. Each competency gets a rating, and every rating needs evidence — something the candidate said or did, written down as specifically as possible. No evidence, no rating: if a competency was not covered, it stays blank rather than guessed. The notes stay job-related, they are written before the hiring debrief so other interviewers do not shape them, and they are kept under your company’s rules for candidate data.
What’s in the template
The file follows one interview from the candidate’s details to a recommendation:
- Header — candidate, role, interview round or type (screening, technical, behavioural or final), interviewer and date.
- Scorecard — a scale of 1 to 4 — 1 no evidence, 2 below the bar, 3 meets the bar, 4 strong evidence — then a table: competency, rating and evidence — what the candidate said or did.
- Strengths — a list.
- Concerns — a list.
- Candidate’s questions — what they asked.
- Logistics — availability, notice period, location, if discussed.
- Recommendation — strong yes, yes, no or strong no, with a one-line reason.
The template opens with one line on its purpose: notes from a job interview, structured as a scorecard — each competency gets a rating backed by evidence from the candidate’s answers, filled in before the hiring debrief, independently from other interviewers.
Interview notes example
Example (fictional). The candidate and events are invented.
| Candidate | Candidate C-17 |
| Role | Backend developer |
| Round | Technical |
| Interviewer | Ilya |
| Date |
Scorecard
| Competency | Rating | Evidence |
|---|---|---|
| System design | 3 | Designed a notification queue; named retry and dead-letter handling without prompting. |
| Code quality | 4 | In the live task wrote tests first; refactored duplicate logic on her own. |
| Communication | 3 | Explained trade-offs clearly; asked two clarifying questions before coding. |
| Databases | Not covered in this round. |
Strengths
- Thinks about failure cases early.
Concerns
- Limited experience with high load — said her largest system handled about 50 requests per second.
Candidate’s questions
- How is on-call organised?
- How are architecture decisions made?
Logistics
Notice period: one month.
Recommendation
Yes — strong fundamentals; check high-load experience in the final round.
Two things here are worth copying. Databases has no rating at all, because the round did not cover it — a blank is honest, a guessed 2 or 3 would not be. And the one concern rests on something the candidate said, with a number, which turns it into a clear question for the final round instead of a vague doubt.
How to fill it in
A scorecard is only as fair as the evidence behind it. The five rules in the template are there to keep it that way: no rating without evidence, evidence that is something said or done rather than an impression, nothing that is not about the job, notes written before anyone compares views, and candidate data handled under the company’s own rules.
- No rating without evidence. If a competency wasn’t covered, leave it blank, don’t guess.
- Evidence is what was said or done, not your impression. “Described how she cut release time from 2 weeks to 3 days” beats “seems strong”.
- Job-related only. Don’t record age, family, health, religion, origin or other personal characteristics, and don’t judge “fit” in ways that stand in for them.
- Write before the debrief so the group doesn’t shape your rating.
- Keep it confidential and follow your company’s retention rules for candidate data.
What not to write in interview notes
Interview notes are read by other people and may be kept for a long time, so leave out anything that is not about whether the person can do the job:
- age, or guesses about it;
- family, children, marriage or plans to have a family;
- health or disability;
- religion or beliefs;
- origin, nationality or accent;
- remarks about appearance or clothing;
- guesses about the candidate’s life outside work;
- vague labels such as “not a culture fit” with no job-related evidence behind them.
If a line would not help someone decide whether the candidate can do the work, it does not belong in the notes.
Other interview templates
| You need | Use |
|---|---|
| A job interview recorded as a scorecard with evidence | This interview notes and scorecard template |
| What a person inside the organisation needs from a project | Stakeholder interview template |
| Evidence from people who use a product: behaviour, pains, exact quotes | User research interview notes template |
Every other template is on the templates page.
Questions
- What should you write in interview notes?
- For each competency the interview covered, a rating and the evidence behind it: what the candidate said or did, as close to their words as you can get. Then strengths, concerns, the candidate's own questions, any logistics they raised, and a recommendation with a one-line reason. Leave a competency blank if the interview did not cover it.
- What should you not write in interview notes?
- Anything that is not about the job: age, family, health, religion, origin or other personal characteristics, remarks about appearance, and guesses about the candidate's life. Avoid vague judgments such as "not a culture fit" that can stand in for those things. If a note would not help decide whether the person can do the work, leave it out.
- How do you use an interview scorecard?
- Agree the competencies for the role before the interviews, rate each one on a fixed scale — in this template 1 to 4, from no evidence to strong evidence — and write the evidence next to every rating. Each interviewer fills in their own scorecard, and the hiring debrief compares them competency by competency.
- Should interviewers write notes before the debrief?
- Yes. Finish your notes and your rating before you hear anyone else's view, so the group does not shape your score. The debrief is then a comparison of independent evidence rather than a conversation where the first or loudest opinion wins.
- Is the template free?
- Yes. The Word and PDF files download free, with no account and no e-mail address asked. The template is in English and carries no product name or branding, so you can add the competencies for your role and follow your company's own rules for keeping candidate data.