Which role is this scorecard for, and which version is it?
Name the role, the hiring manager, and the people-team owner. Give the scorecard a version number and date, and state that every later change carries a date, a reason, and the name of who made it, and that changes are made at reviews, never mid-round. State which version each shortlist is scored under, so a fairness audit can read which criteria applied when.
Verify: the version block is filled before the first application is screened.
- Role: ______ Hiring manager: ______ People owner: ______
- Version ______ Date ______
- Change log: date / reason / by
What are the hard requirements, and what evidence satisfies each?
List the requirements a candidate must meet to be appointable, and for each the evidence in an application that satisfies it: a stated registration number for a professional registration, a named certificate for a certification, stated availability for a shift pattern, a stated location or right to work for eligibility. State that each is marked evidenced, not evidenced, or awaiting verification, and that verification with an issuing body is a human step the Recruiter FTE flags but never performs.
Verify: no hard requirement lacks an evidence rule; a requirement without one cannot be applied consistently.
- Requirement ______ ← evidence: ______
- Requirement ______ ← evidence: ______
- Verification step owner: ______
What are the weighted criteria, and what evidence scores each?
List the criteria that distinguish candidates who meet the hard requirements, with a weight and, for each, what in an application produces a high, medium, or low score: relevant experience in a named setting, specific responsibilities held, demonstrated skills with stated examples. Avoid criteria that reward a particular institution, career path, or background, because those are the criteria a fairness audit most often finds driving differences.
Verify: every criterion can be scored from the application text alone, and every score the FTE gives cites the passage.
- Criterion ______ (weight ___) — high: ______ / medium: ______ / low: ______
- Criterion ______ (weight ___) — high: ______ / medium: ______ / low: ______
When is a candidate flagged for a human conversation instead of ranked?
State the conditions under which the Recruiter FTE flags a candidate for a human conversation instead of ranking them: an unusual background the criteria do not capture, a career gap the application explains, experience in a field the scorecard did not anticipate, or anything about the candidate's circumstances. Flagged candidates appear on the shortlist as flagged, with the reason, and are never scored below others by default.
Verify: the first shortlist shows at least one flag if any applicant meets a flag condition.
What does the scorecard never score?
State explicitly what is never a criterion and never inferred: protected characteristics, personal circumstances, health, family, and anything a person could not lawfully consider. State that the FTE reads only the application and the sources the remit approves, and that anything about a candidate's circumstances escalates rather than being scored.
Verify: the criteria in blocks 2 and 3 contain nothing on this list, read by the people team before use.
What does the fairness audit note record?
Leave a block for the quarterly fairness audit: the date, the shortlists sampled, the groups compared, the differences found, the criteria that drove them, and the scorecard change made with its version. Because every score cites its evidence and every criterion is written here, the audit is a review of this document rather than an investigation of a system.
Verify: the first audit date is on the calendar with an owner before the first round closes.
- Audit date ______ Owner ______
- Shortlists sampled ______ Groups compared ______
- Findings ______ Change made → version ______
How do you use this template?
Fill it with the hiring manager before the first application, using the last round's applications to test whether every criterion can be scored from the text and whether any candidate the team wanted to interview would have been flagged or scored low; both are findings to fix in the scorecard, not in the results. Then let the Recruiter FTE apply it, review shortlists by criterion, and rewrite criteria that are corrected repeatedly, always with a new version.
The scorecard is the fairness of the process made visible. Keep it short enough that a hiring manager can defend every line.