In short
Good interview notes record evidence against the criteria you set before the interview, not a general impression of the person. Write the evidence during the interview, rate it straight afterwards, and do both before you compare views with anyone else.
That order is most of what makes a hiring decision fair and defensible.
This guide gives a template for a structured interview, explains why each part is there, shows a filled-in fictional example, and covers recording: when to ask, what to tell the candidate, and how long to keep anything.
Why structure matters in interview notes
Unstructured notes drift towards how the conversation felt. "Great energy", "not sure about culture fit" and "reminded me of Tom" are all things people write, and none of them tells the hiring panel whether the candidate can do the job. They also make it hard to compare two candidates who were asked different questions by different people.
A structured interview fixes three things in advance:
- The criteria. Four to six things the role needs, written down before any interview.
- The questions. The same core questions for every candidate, each tied to a criterion.
- The scale. What a 1, a 3 and a 5 look like for each criterion, so that ratings mean the same thing across interviewers.
The notes then have one job: capture what the candidate said or did that bears on each criterion. If something the candidate said does not bear on any criterion, it probably does not belong in the notes.
The template
Copy this for each interview. Fill in the criteria and questions once per role, before the first candidate.
# Interview: [candidate] — [role]
Date: [date]
Interviewer: [name]
Stage: [screen / technical / panel / final]
Recorded: [no / yes — candidate agreed at the start]
## Criteria for this interview
1. [criterion] — question: [question]
2. [criterion] — question: [question]
3. [criterion] — question: [question]
## Evidence
### 1. [criterion]
- What they said or did:
- Specific example given (situation, what they did, result):
- Follow-up asked:
### 2. [criterion]
- What they said or did:
- Specific example given:
- Follow-up asked:
### 3. [criterion]
- What they said or did:
- Specific example given:
- Follow-up asked:
## Ratings (after the interview, before the debrief)
| Criterion | Rating (1–5) | Evidence it rests on |
| --------- | ------------ | -------------------- |
| 1. | | |
| 2. | | |
| 3. | | |
## Candidate's questions
-
## Open points for the next stage
-What each part is for
Criteria and questions at the top
Putting the criteria on the page reminds you what you are listening for. It also shows anyone who reads the notes later — another interviewer, the hiring manager, or someone reviewing a complaint — what the interview was meant to assess.
Evidence, in the candidate's words
Write what they said, not your verdict on it. "Led the migration of two services; said the hardest part was agreeing the cut-over date with support" is evidence. "Strong leader" is a conclusion, and it belongs in the rating column, next to the evidence it rests on.
Where a candidate gives an example, note the situation, what they personally did and what happened. If they slide from "I" to "we", a follow-up question ("what was your part?") is worth noting too.
Ratings after, not during
Rating during the interview tends to fix your view early and colour everything after it. Rating straight after, from the evidence you wrote down, keeps each score tied to something the candidate said. Do it before the debrief so that the first confident voice in the room does not set everyone else's scores.
The candidate's questions
What a candidate asks tells you what they care about, and it is useful at the offer stage. It is also a record that they had the chance to ask.
Open points
Things you could not assess, or claims worth checking in the next stage. This is how one interviewer hands over to the next without repeating questions.
A worked example
This example is fictional. Harbour is an invented product.
# Interview: [candidate B] — Support lead, Harbour
Date: 2 October 2026
Interviewer: Priya Shah
Stage: panel
Recorded: yes — candidate agreed at the start
## Criteria for this interview
1. Handling an escalation — question: tell me about a customer escalation you owned.
2. Working with engineering — question: how do you get a bug prioritised?
3. Writing for customers — exercise: rewrite the sample outage notice.
## Evidence
### 1. Handling an escalation
- Owned an escalation from a large customer about repeated data export failures.
- Set up a daily update to the customer; brought in the on-call engineer on day 2.
- Result: fix shipped on day 5; customer renewed. Said the daily update was
"the thing they thanked us for".
- Follow-up: what would you do differently? "Bring engineering in on day 1."
### 2. Working with engineering
- Keeps a shared list of the top 10 customer-facing bugs, reviewed weekly.
- Gave one example of a bug moved up after showing the count of affected tickets.
### 3. Writing for customers
- Rewrite was shorter; led with what was affected and when the next update would come.
- Dropped the internal system name from the notice.
## Ratings
| Criterion | Rating | Evidence it rests on |
| -------------- | ------ | --------------------------------------------------------- |
| 1. Escalation | 4 | Daily updates, owned outcome; engineering brought in late |
| 2. Engineering | 3 | One concrete example; process described, not tested |
| 3. Writing | 5 | Rewrite met every point of the rubric |
## Candidate's questions
- How is the support team's workload measured?
- Who owns the status page?
## Open points for the next stage
- Ask for a second example of working with engineering.Notice what is not there: no comments on appearance, accent, age, family or anything else unrelated to the criteria. If you catch yourself writing one, delete it.
Recording an interview
A recording or transcript lets you write evidence afterwards in the candidate's actual words, instead of a paraphrase jotted while also trying to listen. It also creates a record of a person's voice and words during a process where they have little power to say no, so it deserves care.
Ask first, and mean it. Ask at the start, before anything is saved: "I'd like to record this so I can write accurate notes afterwards. Only the hiring panel will see the notes, and I'll delete the recording once they're written. Is that all right?" Make it clear that declining does not count against them, and if they decline, do not record. How to ask for consent to record has more wording.
Check the rules that apply. Recording law differs between places, and candidate data is personal data under data protection law in many places. Your organisation may already have a policy on recording interviews. Follow it; if there is none, ask whoever handles recruitment policy before you start.
Decide retention in advance. Settle how long the recording, the transcript and the notes are kept. A common pattern is to delete the audio once the evidence notes are written and keep the notes for the period your organisation sets for candidate records.
Keep AI out of the rating. An AI summary can help pull quotes out of a transcript. It should not decide what a candidate's answer was worth. Rate from the evidence yourself, and check any summary against the transcript before relying on it.
For the wider workflow — scheduling, consent at scale, and handing notes to hiring managers — see AI notes for recruiters and hiring managers. For the general structure this template is built on, see the meeting notes template.
Writing evidence from a recording with Notey
If the candidate agrees to a recording, Notey can record a video interview on your Mac without anything joining the call: your microphone and the call's audio are kept as two separate tracks, so the transcript marks your questions as You and the candidate's answers as Them. The transcript is made on your Mac and the audio stays on your disk.
After the interview, click any line's timestamp to hear the answer again before you write it into the evidence section. Everything Notey's AI writes is labelled as AI-generated, which keeps it apart from your own ratings. When the notes are done, you can delete the meeting, which removes its recording, transcript and notes together.
The recording indicator — a red dot and elapsed time — is visible to you, not to the candidate, so saying that you are recording is still your job.
Checklist
- Write the criteria, questions and rating scale before the first interview.
- Ask before recording, and do not record if the candidate declines.
- Note evidence in the candidate's words during the interview.
- Rate each criterion straight afterwards, before the debrief.
- Record open points for the next interviewer.
- Apply the retention period you set — to audio first.
Frequently asked questions
What should interview notes include?
The criteria for the role, what the candidate said or did that bears on each one, a rating per criterion made after the interview, and the date and interviewer. Leave out impressions that are not tied to a criterion.
Should I write interview notes during the interview?
Write short evidence notes during it — what the candidate said, in their words where it matters — and do the rating straight afterwards, before talking to other interviewers.
Can I record a job interview?
Only with the candidate's agreement, asked for before you start, and in line with your organisation's policy and the law where you both are. Tell them why you are recording, who will hear it and when it will be deleted.
How long should I keep interview notes?
Your organisation should set the period in advance, and many places have data protection rules on how long candidate data can be kept. Decide it before the first interview and apply it to notes and recordings alike.