Adding criteria to review Sift and Interview questions

For all the Applied Assessments, you can add criteria to determine what is a great or poor response. This helps your hiring teams understand what to look for in candidate applications, which translates into standardisation of reviews and reduction of subjectivity.

In the case of multiple-choice questions, the criterion simply means determining which choices selected by candidates are correct or wrong (where one is correct).

In the case of Sift and Interview questions, the criteria that you add can be more extensive and their value is to help the hiring team to be as objective as possible when assessing candidates' answers.

Here you will learn:

• Where to add the criteria.
• What structure can you use for the Review Guide.
• When to add criteria to the review guide.
• At which point of the recruiting process are these criteria used by the hiring team.

 

Where to add the criteria

You can add criteria at a question level.

There's a box at the end of every question template that is called Add a Review Guide.

In this Review Guide, you can be as parsimonious or as exhaustive as you like. 

Structure of the Review Guide

We recommend a structure that's aligned with the 5-point scale scoring that hiring teams use both at the de-biased review of Sift questions and at the interview stage.

The key here is providing your hiring team with enough information to understand what you're looking for - without overwhelming them and leaving a bit of space for candidates to surprise you with their responses. 

You're welcome to use whatever text-based format you like, but here's an example of a common format: 

General Structure

Example from Sift Question Library

1 star: criterion 1.1 criterion 1.2 criterion 1.3  3 stars: criterion 3.1 criterion 3.2 criterion 3.3 5 stars: criterion 5.1 criterion 5.2 criterion 5.3

Question: Give us an example of a time where you faced obstacles while trying to learn a new skill. How did you overcome the challenges?   Tagged Skills: Resilience, Curiosity Review Guide: 1 star: No evidence of learning a new skill.  No evidence of what the obstacle was or how they overcame it. Gave up when it became difficult.  3 stars: Clearly illustrates a challenge they faced. Shows solid evidence of successfully learning a new skill. Shows the ability to keep trying when there is an obstacle. 5 stars: Provided a compelling example of a challenge they faced and their diagnosis on what they needed to learn to overcome it.  Shows a genuine thirst for learning and self-reflection.  Can employ different methods or ideas to further themselves when they get stuck.

Can I add the Review Guide later?

We recommend you to complete the Review Guide at the same time you are creating the questions and tagging them with skills. It's usually easier to do it all in one go as you have all of the relevant information to hand, and an idea of the rationale for the questions. 

But we understand that sometimes you have to meet deadlines and advertise the role as soon as possible. If this is the case, you can also add the criteria after going live with the role but before you allocate sift questions to the hiring team or send interviewing links to them. The quality of the recruiting process will be affected negatively if you don't add this information before those critical moments.

How does the Review Guide appear to the hiring team?

The Review Guides of Sift questions and Interview questions will be used by the hiring teams when they go through the de-biased review of Sift questions and interviews, respectively. Every time they start assessing an answer, on the same screen they'll also see:

A. The text of the question that they'll score,
B. The skills that have been tagged to the question, and
C. The review guide.

This helps consistency to stay top of mind and to make it easy for them to refer back to.