Free template
Hire against the same clear criteria from advert to decision. Write a job description that tells candidates what the job really involves, agree an internal brief before you advertise, and record interview evidence on a scorecard that asks every candidate about the same job-related things.
Enlarge preview: Job descriptionPublish it or send it to candidates.
Business, location, reporting line, hours and pattern, contract, start date, pay and benefits; what the role is for, what you will do, what you need already, what we will train you in, what success looks like after three months, and how to apply. No internal notes.
Blank and 2 examples · Word and PDF
Enlarge preview: Hiring brief (internal)Agree it before you advertise.
Why the role is needed, the approved pay range, target start, the job-related assessment criteria (each marked required on day one or trainable, with how it will be assessed), the interview plan and ground rules. Marked INTERNAL on every page.
Blank and 2 examples · Word and PDF
Enlarge preview: Interview scorecard (internal)One per interviewer, per candidate.
The same criteria in the same order for every candidate, the question or task used, what the candidate said or did, and a rating from 1 to 4 — or “Not assessed”, which is not a low score. No totals, ranking or decision. Landscape, marked INTERNAL on every page.
Blank and 2 examples · Word and PDF
Choose a document, a version and a format. After the first download, the others need no new form.
Word files open in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Apple Pages and LibreOffice; we checked them in LibreOffice. US Letter; change the paper size for A4. The examples use invented businesses, people and pay — set your own.
The job description is for candidates. Budgets, the approved pay range, interview plans and assessment notes belong in the internal hiring brief and scorecards, so none of it is published by mistake.
Things the job actually needs, each traceable to a duty in the job description — for example “keeping a shared diary accurate” or “following a written checklist”. The templates leave out “culture fit” and personal characteristics, and say not to ask about age, family plans, health, religion, nationality or other personal matters unrelated to the work.
The criterion was not covered in that interview — perhaps it is trained after starting, or there was no time. It is not a low score, and it tells the hiring manager to look for evidence elsewhere.
No. There is no total and no ranking. The hiring manager reviews the evidence from every interviewer and records the decision and the reasons separately.
They show how different roles fill the same templates: an office-based coordinator assessed with written and diary tasks, and an evening cleaning role assessed with a short site walk-round, where trainable skills are marked “Not assessed”.
Word files open in Microsoft Word, Google Docs, Apple Pages and LibreOffice; the PDFs print as they are. We checked them in LibreOffice only.