Feedback
How interview feedback reveals the maturity of your recruiting process
When evaluating the effectiveness and maturity of a company’s hiring practices, you might instinctively look at time-to-hire metrics, cost-per-hire, or even diversity ratios. But there’s a subtler, more revealing diagnostic tool that’s often overlooked: interview feedback.
Reading through a sample of interview feedback notes can tell you more about the true state of your hiring process than any metric. Feedback notes reveal whether your recruitment is structured and equitable, or still reliant on gut feelings and informal judgments.
Warning signs:
Does your organisation’s feedback contain comments such as:
“Poor culture fit.”
“Has done a very similar role at our main competitor.”
"Lacks sufficient gravitas for a role this senior."
These vague impressions are red flags that suggest that the interviewer is making decisions based on intuition rather than evidence.
Such feedback often masks unconscious biases or undefined expectations and undermines any effort to hire fairly or consistently.
Objective notes signal mature recruiting
In organisations with a mature hiring process, interview feedback is grounded in clear, predefined criteria that align with the role’s requirements. Interviewers know exactly what competencies they are assessing, be it problem-solving, communication skills, leadership or technical ability and their notes reflect this.
You’ll see structured observations like:
“Candidate provided a clear, step-by-step explanation of their decision-making process when solving X, considered several approaches based on industry best practice and considered available data. Score: 4.”
“Met expectations for collaboration by describing how they resolved a team conflict using active listening. Showed high level of empathy while balancing this with the need to achieve business outcomes. Solved the immediate problem but did not develop this to reduce chance of any future conflict. Score: 3.”
These types of statements are anchored in observable behaviour, not feelings. They show that the interviewer has been trained to assess against a rubric, that the role has been scoped carefully, and that the hiring team is aligned on what ‘good’ looks like.
This kind of feedback is fairer to candidates and reflects a process designed to be repeatable, data-informed, and legally sound.
Feedback Audits: A Simple, Powerful Tool
Auditing interview feedback doesn’t require complex tools or analytics. A basic review of notes across a few roles can quickly show you where your process stands.
Ask:
Are interviewers linking their observations to specific competencies or criteria?
Are assessments written in behavioural, evidence-based language?
Do notes avoid vague, emotive, or culturally loaded phrases?
If the answer is “no” to these questions then it’s time to invest in training your hiring managers.