How to create and apply assessment scorecards in a recruitment process

Scorecards are assessment tools that allow you to evaluate applicants consistently, creating sets of criteria that will be scored using stars. Each scorecard can then be used in one or more jobs. 

Here you can see how to create an effective assessment scorecard:

To define a scorecard you must:

• Take into account the main objective of the assessment: What are you measuring?
• Write down the areas you want to assess & group them accordingly. (eg. everything related to Ruby on Rails should go together.)
• Create statements of expected performance at each level of the rubric.
• Develop the criteria, rating scale, and descriptions for each level of the rating scale into a rubric.

For example:

Let's take this requirement from a Rails+React challenge:

Capability to delete searches: We would like to click on a icon and delete some of the searches.

In this case, we want to assess both front-end and back-end skills in a Rails app.

• In the front end, there should be an icon in the view of "searches", so what is the expected outcome?
• What should it look like? what is to be assessed here? Correct use of font-awesome? Bootstrap? plain old good CSS? Javascript? Does the method delete?
• In the back-end, we want this icon to do something (Delete a search), so what is the expected outcome?
• Creation of a method in the controller? MVC? REST? Creation of routes?

After we analyze the task and have a clear idea of the expected outcome, we can develop the indicators for the assessment:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

• The icon is successfully introduced in the “searches” view. (Front + Javascript + React)
• The method delete in the controller of searches and the corresponding route are created. (Rails)
• When clicking the icon, the delete method works perfectly. (Back)
• The code is clean, with proper use of haml/ERB/Slim, etc. (Legibility)

NOW, we need to create a Scorecard to grade these outcomes:

And we can include subcriteria to make it more specific and clear, according to the indicators (outcomes) you have:

For each scorecard, you can include as many criteria as you need, assigning them evaluation weights, which range from low (0.5x) to very high (2x), depending on the relevance of each skill for the position. These criteria weights will influence the final score calculation of each applicant.

How to Use a Grading Scorecard

1. For each task in the challenge, you will have the indicators of the expected outcome.
2. Check if the candidate achieved the goal, and the way s/he did it to assign the score (provided in the scorecard)
3. Average the scores per task and assign them to the corresponding criterion in the Scorecard.

Bear in mind that scorecards are graded on a 5-star scale:

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ = Excellent
⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️ = Very Good
⭐️⭐️⭐️ = Good
⭐️⭐️ = Average
⭐️ = Not achieved

You can use scorecards to assess technical knowledge, skills, cultural fit, etc. You just need to have a clear picture of the expected outcome before creating the assessment instrument and challenge (if any). 

Using scorecards as a checklist

You can use a scorecard as a checklist of skills required. In this case, you might use the 5-star scale or simply apply a 2-star scale (whether the skill is present or not). 

Once you have your scorecard ready, you can assign it to any job. Check here out to do it.