Interview Scorecard Template: Free to Copy, With a Scoring Rubric and a Filled-In Example
Method: product behavior was checked against the live implementation; market and regulatory claims use the linked sources below. Dates change only after claims are re-verified.
An interview scorecard template lists the three to five competencies the job needs, a rating scale with a written meaning for every score, space for the candidate’s own words as evidence, and a recommendation that follows from the ratings. Copy the template below, fill in the competencies before the first interview, and score every candidate on the same sheet.
What should an interview scorecard include?
Six parts. The first two make it a form. The other four make two interviewers’ scorecards comparable: one scale with written anchors, quoted evidence, a recommendation rule set in advance, and a note of what the interview missed.
The US Office of Personnel Management describes a structured interview the same way: every candidate gets the same questions, and “all responses are evaluated using the same rating scale and standards for acceptable answers.” The scorecard is where those standards get written down.
| Part | What to write | Example |
|---|---|---|
| Header | What to writeCandidate, role, round, interviewer, date | Example[Candidate] · Customer Success Manager · Round 1 · [Interviewer] · [Date] |
| Competencies | What to writeThree to five skills from the job description, each with a weight and a must-have flag | ExampleAccount ownership: must-have, 30% |
| Rating scale | What to writeOne scale for every interviewer, with a written anchor for each score | Example0–4, where 2 means “meets the bar for this role” |
| Evidence | What to writeThe candidate’s words, quoted, next to each score | Example“I called the three accounts that hadn’t logged in for 30 days” |
| Recommendation | What to writeStrong hire, hire, borderline or no hire, from rules you set before interviewing | ExampleAny must-have below 2 is a no hire, whatever the average |
| Next round | What to writeWhat this interview didn’t cover, and what to ask next | ExampleRenewal negotiation: not asked. Cover it in round 2 |
Why a scorecard is worth the ten minutes
Because structure is what makes an interview predict anything. In 2022, Paul Sackett and three colleagues re-examined the best-known estimates of how well hiring methods predict job performance, in the Journal of Applied Psychology. Structured interviews came out on top, with a mean operational validity of .42, ahead of cognitive ability tests at .31, as SIOP’s summary of the paper reports.
An interview only stays structured if the scoring does. Same questions with a free-text notes box afterwards puts you back to gut feel.
structured interviews, the highest of the methods re-examined
JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY, 2022
cognitive ability tests, once the field’s front-runner
JOURNAL OF APPLIED PSYCHOLOGY, 2022
The free interview scorecard template
Copy the table into Excel, Google Sheets or a doc. Selecting the table and pasting it keeps the columns. Replace the example competencies with three to five from your job description, then save one copy per candidate.
Leave the score empty when the interview didn’t test a competency. Empty and 0 mean different things, and the difference decides the total.
| Competency | Weight | Must-have? | Score (0–4) | Evidence: the candidate’s words | Ask next round |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| [Role skill 1, e.g. Account ownership] | Weight30% | Must-have?Yes | Score (0–4) | Evidence: the candidate’s words | Ask next round |
| [Role skill 2, e.g. Problem solving] | Weight30% | Must-have?Yes | Score (0–4) | Evidence: the candidate’s words | Ask next round |
| [Role skill 3, e.g. Communication] | Weight20% | Must-have?No | Score (0–4) | Evidence: the candidate’s words | Ask next round |
| [Role skill 4, e.g. Product knowledge] | Weight20% | Must-have?No | Score (0–4) | Evidence: the candidate’s words | Ask next round |
| Overall: weighted, scored rows only | Weight | Must-have? | Score (0–4) | Evidence: the candidate’s words | Ask next round |
| Recommendation | Weight | Must-have? | Score (0–4)Strong hire / Hire / Borderline / No hire | Evidence: the candidate’s words | Ask next round |
| Interviewer · date · round | Weight | Must-have? | Score (0–4) | Evidence: the candidate’s words | Ask next round |
Interview scoring rubric: what 0 to 4 means
Use a 0–4 scale with 2 as the bar for the role. That puts “meets the bar” in the middle, with room either side, and it keeps 0 for “tried and got nothing right”, which is not the same as “never asked”. It is the scale our own scorer uses.
Labels alone are not enough, because two interviewers will read “strong” differently. Write one line per score for each competency that says what the answer contains. The table writes out one competency.
Our evidence rule: every score needs a quote, and a 3 or a 4 needs two different ones. One good sentence can be luck. Two is a pattern.
| Score | Label | What the answer contains (Account ownership, Customer Success Manager) |
|---|---|---|
| 0 | LabelNo attempt | What the answer contains (Account ownership, Customer Success Manager)No answer, or an answer to a different question |
| 1 | LabelPartial | What the answer contains (Account ownership, Customer Success Manager)Describes the team’s process, not their own part: “we had a churn playbook” |
| 2 | LabelAdequate: meets the bar | What the answer contains (Account ownership, Customer Success Manager)One real account, what they did, and what happened next |
| 3 | LabelStrong | What the answer contains (Account ownership, Customer Success Manager)Two or more accounts, their own decisions, and a result with a number |
| 4 | LabelExceptional | What the answer contains (Account ownership, Customer Success Manager)Results with numbers, plus a trade-off they weighed and why they chose as they did |
| Blank | LabelNot assessed | What the answer contains (Account ownership, Customer Success Manager)The interview didn’t cover it. Leave it out of the total |
A filled-in interview scorecard example
Below, the template is filled in after a first-round screen for a Customer Success Manager. The candidate and the quotes are invented for illustration. The arithmetic is the point.
The weighted overall uses only the competencies that were scored: (3 × 30 + 2 × 30 + 4 × 20) ÷ 80 = 2.9. Product knowledge wasn’t asked, so it stays blank instead of dragging the average down to 2.3, and it moves to round 2. Both must-haves are at 2 or above, so the recommendation is hire.
| Competency | Weight | Must-have? | Score | Evidence | Ask next round |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Account ownership | Weight30% | Must-have?Yes | Score3 | Evidence“I owned 42 accounts and called the three that hadn’t logged in for 30 days” · “two of the three renewed” | Ask next round— |
| Problem solving | Weight30% | Must-have?Yes | Score2 | Evidence“I rebuilt the onboarding checklist after two customers missed the same step” | Ask next roundWhat changed after the new checklist, in numbers? |
| Communication | Weight20% | Must-have?No | Score4 | Evidence“I sent the sponsor a one-page summary before the call” · “I said no to the custom report and offered a weekly export instead” | Ask next round— |
| Product knowledge | Weight20% | Must-have?No | ScoreBlank (not asked) | Evidence— | Ask next roundHow would you explain [feature] to a new admin? |
| Overall | Weight | Must-have? | Score2.9 (scored rows only) | Evidence | Ask next round |
| Recommendation | Weight | Must-have? | ScoreHire | EvidenceBoth must-haves at 2 or above | Ask next round |
How to turn scores into a recommendation
Decide the rule before you meet anyone. Decide it afterwards and it bends toward the candidate you already like. Here is a rule set you can copy. Change the thresholds if you need to, but not halfway through a hiring round.
- No hire: any must-have below 2, or an overall below 1.5.
- Borderline: an overall from 1.5 up to 2, with every must-have at 2 or above.
- Hire: an overall of 2 or more, with every must-have at 2 or above.
- Strong hire: an overall of 3.25 or more, with every must-have at 3 or above.
- A blank must-have is not a pass. Mark the scorecard incomplete and cover it in the next round.
How to use the scorecard in an interview
The template only helps if everyone fills it in the same way. Four habits do most of the work.
- Before: map every question to one competency. A competency with no question will come back blank.
- During: write down what they said, word for word where you can. “Great communicator” is an opinion. “I sent the sponsor a one-page summary” is evidence.
- After: score alone, the same day, before you talk to anyone else on the panel.
- In the debrief: put the scorecards side by side. Where two scores for the same competency differ by 2 or more, read the evidence aloud before anyone argues.
Five mistakes that make scorecards useless
Each of these turns a scorecard back into a notes page with numbers on it.
- “Culture fit” as a competency. It can’t be anchored, and it invites personal judgements. Name the behaviour the job needs instead, such as “writes a weekly client update”.
- Scoring after the debrief. Whoever speaks first sets the number.
- Averaging away a must-have. A 4 in communication shouldn’t rescue a 1 in the skill the job exists for.
- Giving 0 to a competency the interview never tested. That isn’t a low score. It’s a missing one.
- Too many competencies. Past five, a 30-minute interview can’t cover them, and the extra boxes get filled with guesses.
How Gaugely fills in the scorecard from the interview
We build an AI interviewer, and its scorecards follow the rules above, with the transcript as the notes. Every candidate for a job gets the same questions, each tagged to the competency it tests. After the interview, the scorer rates each competency from 0 to 4 against the role’s rubric.
The evidence rule is written into the scorer’s instructions: every score needs a word-for-word quote from the candidate, and a 3 or 4 needs at least two. Part of it is also enforced in code, because instructions alone weren’t enough. In one real interview, the scorer gave a competency a 0 with no quote at all, and that unsupported number dragged a real candidate’s average down. Now any competency scored without a quote is dropped and the average is recalculated. (If nothing in the interview has a quote, the card is kept as it is rather than shown blank.) An unevidenced score is not a low score. It is an absent one.
The scorecard also shows which questions were answered, not answered or not asked, so a gap is visible instead of hidden, and competencies no question probed are left off. Grammar and accent never lower a score, and a longer answer doesn’t earn a higher one.
Each scorecard ends in strong hire, hire, borderline or no hire, and candidates line up side by side for comparison. A person reads the quotes and decides; Gaugely never rejects anyone automatically. The Free plan includes about 12 interviews a month.
Integrity flags such as tab switches reach the same person as review signals. Nothing is rejected automatically.
A free interview scorecard template for Excel or Google Sheets, a 0–4 interview scoring rubric, a filled-in example, and the one rule that keeps scores honest.
Questions people ask
Is there a free interview scorecard template for Excel?
Yes, the template on this page. Select the table and paste it into Excel or Google Sheets, and it keeps its columns. For the weighted overall, multiply each score by its weight, add those up, and divide by the total weight of the rows you actually scored.
What is a good interview scoring scale?
A short scale with a written meaning for every point. We use 0 to 4, with 2 as “meets the bar for this role” and a blank for “not assessed”. Five points separate candidates well enough without inviting arguments over a 6 versus a 7.
How do you score an interview?
Score each competency on its own, straight after the interview and before talking to the other interviewers. Match what the candidate said to the written anchors, quote their words next to the score, then apply the recommendation rule you set before the interviews began.
What is the difference between an interview scorecard and an interview evaluation form?
Often only the name. Where they differ, an evaluation form collects general impressions, while a scorecard rates set competencies on a fixed scale with evidence, so candidates can be compared on the same terms.
Should interview scorecards be weighted?
Weight them when the competencies don’t matter equally, and flag must-haves separately. Weights decide the average. Must-haves decide whether the average counts at all.
SOURCES
- Sackett, Zhang, Berry & Lievens — Revisiting meta-analytic estimates of validity in personnel selection, Journal of Applied Psychology 107(11), 2022
- SIOP TIP — Is cognitive ability the best predictor of job performance? (summary of Sackett et al.; checked 2026-10-12)
- U.S. OPM — Structured interviews (checked 2026-10-12)