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Decide what good looks like before reading CVs
A fair scoring sheet with clear criteria and what each score means, agreed before you see any applications, so every candidate is judged the same way.
When to use it
Before the closing date of every vacancy
Step by step
Pick 4 to 6 criteria from the job ad
Use the must-haves from your advert, such as 'experience handling customer complaints'. Avoid vague ones like 'good culture fit'.
Ask AI to turn them into a rubric
Paste your criteria into your AI assistant with this prompt.
Prompt to copyCreate a scoring rubric for shortlisting candidates for [job title]. Criteria: [list]. For each criterion, describe what a score of 1 (no evidence), 2 (some evidence), 3 (clear evidence) and 4 (strong, repeated evidence) looks like, with a short example of the kind of evidence that counts. Make sure every criterion relates to the job itself, and point out any that could unfairly disadvantage people because of age, sex, disability, race, religion or other protected characteristics. Format as a table I can paste into a spreadsheet.Build the scoring sheet
Paste the rubric into a Google Sheet tab, and make a second tab with a row per candidate, a column per criterion, a total, and a notes column for evidence.
Agree it with anyone else involved
If others are shortlisting with you, agree the rubric together and score separately before comparing.
What you get
Criterion: Handling unhappy customers. 1 - no mention. 2 - mentions customer-facing work. 3 - describes resolving a complaint. 4 - several examples, including calming a tense situation and a result. Candidate C-03: 3 (evidence: 'resolved delivery complaints in a busy retail store').
Tips
- Give candidates a code, like C-01, and score before looking at names, photos or ages where you can.
- A person must make every shortlisting decision; the rubric is there to make human judgement more consistent.