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When the CEO and the Team Lead Are Looking for Different People
You’re hiring one marketer. The CEO wants someone to grow revenue. The marketing lead wants someone to run ads. HR wants a strong collaborator. No one has decided whether acquiring new customers or managing existing campaigns comes first. Only at the hiring debrief does it become clear: everyone was looking for a different person.
A hiring scorecard puts HR and the hiring team’s expectations in writing, anchored in the work the person will own and the behaviors you need to see. It connects the reason for hiring, tasks, expected outcomes, observable behaviors, and assessment methods. That becomes the starting point for your job posting, interview questions, and work sample task.
Consider a skincare brand with roughly 50 employees that sells through its own online store and is hiring an experienced performance marketer. The marketing lead currently handles both advertising and promotion coordination. The three expectations above may sound compatible, but each calls for different experience and behaviors. Unless you agree on the role before posting it, three people will judge the same candidate against three different standards.
The US Office of Personnel Management (OPM) describes job analysis as the foundation of all assessment and selection decisions. Its job analysis guidance calls for examining a role’s tasks, the competencies those tasks require, and the connections between them. Google’s re:Work, which shares the company’s people practices, makes a similar point in its structured interviewing guide: start by defining the specific attributes someone needs to succeed in the role. A hiring scorecard captures that first step in a document you build with the hiring team.
Turn the Hiring Request Into Work Someone Will Own
When someone says, “We need a person who can grow revenue,” ask what’s missing today. Are new customer numbers flat? Are existing customers buying less often? Or does the marketing lead have no time to plan the next campaign because they’re managing ads and coordinating promotions? Each problem points to a different role. Experience in performance marketing doesn’t tell you whether someone has done the specific work you need.
Total years of experience won’t answer that question. In a 2022 meta-analysis of selection validity, University of Minnesota professor Paul Sackett and his coauthors estimated the validity of total years of experience for predicting job performance at .07. In the same analysis, structured interviews had an estimated validity of .42 and work samples .33. Ask what candidates accomplished and how they did it, rather than relying on how long they’ve worked.
| Hiring Brief Item | Hypothetical Performance Marketer Example |
|---|---|
| Reason for hiring | The marketing lead handles both advertising and promotion coordination, leaving too little time to plan the next campaign. |
| Work to own | Review acquisition campaign performance and recommend the next campaign plan. |
| Expected outcomes | Base the next budget on new customer numbers and profit after discount costs. Announce promotions only after terms and inventory are confirmed. |
| Required at hire | Distinguish verified figures from estimates; assess effects on new customers and profit; check inventory and discount terms before launch. |
| Learned after joining | Product lineup, promotion coordination process, and budget approval limits. |
Define Competencies Through Observable Behaviors
Write only “data analysis competency” on the scorecard, and you risk favoring candidates who know plenty of metrics and present reports fluently. This role needs someone who checks whether ad-attributed revenue includes repeat purchases, calculates profit after discount costs, and holds off on announcing a promotion until its terms are final. Specific behaviors distinguish familiarity with metrics from the work you actually need done.
| Task | Observable Behavior | Assessment Method | Follow-Up Question |
|---|---|---|---|
| Review campaign performance | Separate verified figures from estimates | Work sample response, experience-based interview | Did they identify repeat purchases within ad-attributed revenue? |
| Recommend budget allocation | Compare ad spend per first-time customer and profit after discounts | Budget proposal, follow-up questions | What did they examine beyond ROAS? |
| Execute promotions | Check inventory, discount terms, and approval limits first | Prelaunch checklist, interview | How did they handle disagreement with the person responsible? |
The same approach works for operations and customer service roles. Break “customer service skills” into behaviors such as categorizing recurring inquiries, deciding when to escalate, and explaining the impact on customers. Decide whether to include policies taught after hire in the task materials, so you don’t confuse knowledge of company rules with judgment.
Separate Day-One Requirements From What You Can Teach
Don’t let what’s easy to test crowd out what matters. A candidate’s unfamiliarity with your advertising platform’s interface doesn’t mean they lack budget judgment. Conversely, if the person will own campaign budgets immediately, distinguishing verified ad-attributed revenue figures from estimates can’t simply wait until after they join.
Label each behavior “Required at hire,” “Learned after joining,” or “Needs discussion.” Separating teachable knowledge from judgment you need to assess now helps you set task difficulty and interview questions. The meta-analysis cited above makes a related distinction: work samples and job knowledge tests are used when candidates are expected to have relevant training or experience already. Other tools, such as cognitive ability tests, may be used when hiring people who will learn the job knowledge after joining. Our guide to choosing assessment methods explains how to combine methods with that distinction in mind.
Agree on What Counts as Evidence
A track record of dramatically improving ad performance gives you a reason to dig deeper. It doesn’t, by itself, establish that someone can own the budget. Use the interview to explore what they personally did and why. Use a work sample task to examine the budget allocation they propose from a common advertising performance report. Look for evidence of the behavior in both.
Agree in advance on how to interpret that evidence. The re:Work guide recommends standardized scoring criteria so every evaluator shares an understanding of excellent, good, borderline, and poor answers. For an advertising performance task, a good answer might “identify repeat purchases by existing registered customers within ad-attributed revenue and compare channels by ad spend per first-time customer.”
You don’t have to use identical scores for interviews and work samples; each reveals something different. Record whether a behavior is “Verified in the evidence,” “Partially verified,” or “Not yet verified,” so your final hiring debrief can start with the gaps in the evidence.
When Criteria Change, Record Why
HR documents the brief and assessment methods. The hiring team explains the actual work and required proficiency. The final decision-maker confirms priorities. Have all three review the same response and compare the evidence behind their judgments. That exposes differences in standards each person assumed were obvious.
Criteria may change during the hiring process. Record what changed, why, and how you’ll handle candidates who have already completed assessment stages.
| Change Record | Example |
|---|---|
| Original criteria | Own both acquisition campaigns and promotions that drive repeat purchases from existing customers. |
| Revised need | For now, prioritize acquisition campaign reviews and budget recommendations. |
| Assessment change | Give greater attention to evidence of new customer and profit analysis in the advertising performance task than to promotion planning experience. |
| Consistency across candidates | Give candidates who have already completed stages the same opportunity for additional assessment. |
Once your scorecard is complete, put it to work with the complete advertising performance task example and structured interview guide. Interview Pro can help you prepare questions aligned with your criteria and examine the evidence in candidates’ answers. Assessment can help you assess performance in workplace scenarios. Whatever tool you choose, first agree on the behaviors it needs to reveal.
Frequently Asked Questions
How Does a Hiring Scorecard Differ From an Interview Scorecard?
A hiring scorecard defines the work and observable behaviors before resume screening, interviews, or work sample assessment begins. An interview scorecard records the answers and evidence gathered during the interview. Resume screening, interviews, and work sample tasks all draw on the same hiring scorecard.
How Many Competencies Should You Include?
There’s no fixed number that works for every company; the scope depends on the role. Instead of listing more competency names, check that you’ve covered the tasks that matter for selection and have a practical way to assess each behavior.
Related Reading
- How to Reduce Bad Hires: A Hiring Improvement Guide for Growing Companies
- Work Sample Task Example: From Brief to Answers, Rubric, and Evaluation Notes
- Hiring Assessment Methods Compared: Interviews, Work Samples, and SJTs
- What Is a Structured Interview? Definition, BEI Comparison, and 4 Design Steps
Sources
- OPM · Job Analysis — Explains job analysis as the foundation of assessment and selection decisions, examining tasks, competencies, and their connections.
- Google re:Work · A guide to structured interviewing for better hiring practices (2026) — Recommends defining the attributes a role requires, then scoring against standardized criteria with shared descriptions of answer quality.
- Journal of Applied Psychology · Sackett et al., Revisiting Meta-Analytic Estimates of Validity in Personnel Selection (2022) — Reports validity estimates of .07 for total years of experience, .42 for structured interviews, and .33 for work samples, and discusses when work samples and job knowledge tests apply.
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