With structured hiring, you define the role requirements, the attributes of successful candidates and the evaluation process for each role you open.

Now that you’ve learned how to set up jobs during implementation, it’s time to level-up with the basics of structured hiring. Here are five steps you can follow to start building your structured hiring process.

Step 1

Set up a kick off meeting

A kickoff meeting for a new role is the first step in the structured hiring process and it should happen before a role is opened. This is when the hiring team – typically the hiring manager, recruiter and coordinator – define the following:

The ideal candidate based on the business objectives of the job
The skills, traits and qualifications that will make someone successful in the job
The roles and responsibilities of the hiring team during the hiring process

Ready to go? Use this worksheet to help you organize and facilitate an effective kickoff meeting.

Once you determine the details of your kickoff meeting, use the job kickoff feature under the “Job Setup” tab. This intuitive, comprehensive tool provides a natural flow to guide you through the kickoff conversation and ensure you’re capturing all the information you need to start recruiting successfully.

Step 2

Create a scorecard

The kickoff meeting should uncover all the information you need to create a relevant scorecard.

Your scorecard is part of your interview kit and is where you’ll define attributes for a successful candidate and outline interview questions for each interviewer. Here are the best practices steps for creating a scorecard:

Create a job in Greenhouse

We recommend copying from a template job you or your team has created and eventually building a set of job templates to choose from.

Configure categories for attributes

Categories are used to organize your scorecard into sections, based on the sets of attributes you’ll interview for. We recommend including three or four categories per job.

Fill in the attributes for each category

Attributes are the specific skills and qualifications required within each category. Use no more than five or six attributes per category so you can realistically evaluate them and make them specific.

To keep each interviewer focused and efficient, be sure to take these actions when building the rest of your interview kit:

Assign focus attributes

Within your interview kit, assign focus attributes from your scorecard so interviewers can more easily identify the attributes each interview should assess.

Create custom questions

Build custom questions based on the assigned focus attributes to ensure every interview has a unique set of questions that keep your candidates engaged.

Pro tip – You can also link focus attributes to specific interview questions.

Step 3

Schedule interviews

Scheduling interviews within Greenhouse is key for driving structured hiring buy-in across your company because it enables a seamless experience for all your interviewers.

With Greenhouse Recruiting, you can coordinate, sync and manage your organization's interview schedule across multiple interviewer calendars. Think of Greenhouse as a compiler that aggregates changes made to an interviewer's calendar, and then pushes those updates via email to the relevant candidate's calendar.

The Greenhouse scheduling model guides you through scheduling functionality.

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Our email and calendar integrations simplify the scheduling process and work with the systems you already use, including: Google Calendar, Outlook 365 and Calendly.

Step 4

Set expectations for scorecard submission

Before you begin interviewing, make sure your interview team is clear on how and when they’re expected to submit their scorecards. We recommend a minimum submission timeline of one business day following an interview, but the sooner, the better!

We created our scorecard rating setup using science-based survey methods that account for the various ways an interviewer could interpret a scorecard. Our carefully crafted scorecard rating system provides your organization with the best possible platform to reduce bias and individual differences.

Greenhouse will automatically send a reminder to your interviewers one hour after each interview has ended. You can also set up additional automatic and manual reminders to keep your hiring team accountable.

Use these customizable training templates and share this Learn Greenhouse course on how to submit interview feedback using interview kits to help set your interviewers up for success when submitting a scorecard.

Step 5

Facilitate a roundup meeting

Once late-stage candidates have finished their pre-offer interviews and scorecards have been submitted, the next step in making an informed hiring decision is gathering the hiring team for a candidate roundup meeting. These meetings can take 30 minutes to an hour, and should be where you constructively review scorecard data gathered during the interview process. Focus on candidates one by one with your team and aim to come out of the meeting with a hiring decision.

A good roundup meeting should accomplish the following:

A decision on who you will extend an offer to
A short-list of actions required to make an offer
A review of any lessons learned and how you can apply them to the next role

In the roundup meeting, encourage hiring teams to focus on attributes, not gut feelings, to ensure the assessments are backed up by behavioral examples.

For example, if an assessment is vague, ask: “Can you provide an example?” or “Can you explain what made you feel that way?”

A final note:

Once you’ve extended an offer and the candidate accepts, the final step in the hiring process is marking a candidate as hired. Completing this important step ensures the job is closed and your time-to-hire data is accurate.

Note: As your structured hiring process should always be a work in progress, it should be your goal to measurably improve with each iteration.