Job interview guide template for Word
Job interview guide template for Word
When two people apply for the same job in a warehouse or a shop, what should settle the hire is not how pleasant the conversation felt but an honest comparison between what each of them answered. That comparison only exists if every candidate was asked the same questions, in the same order, on the same scoring scale. This job interview guide template for Word exists for exactly that: so the interview stops being an improvised chat and becomes a process you can repeat, explain and read again.
The file is written for owners, managers and area supervisors who interview without being human resources specialists: the warehouse that needs a stock assistant, the shop that needs a salesperson, the distributor taking on a driver. It carries the process details, the job description, the five scored criteria with their weights, the questions by competence, three situations to put to the candidate, the weighted scoring table and the space for the final recommendation. You download it, adapt it with your company name and it is ready to print before the next interview.
The guide does not turn anyone into a selection expert and it does not try to. What it does is force you to decide, before the interview, what you are going to assess, how much each criterion weighs and which question explores it. That preparation is what avoids the most repeated scene in a small business: hiring on gut feeling, finding out two months later that conditions were never discussed, and having no record at all of what was said that day.
⬇ Download job interview guide (.docx)What it is and what it is for
A job interview guide is the interviewer's working document. It is not a questionnaire for the candidate and it is not a personality test: it is the sheet in front of you while you talk, with the questions already thought through, room to write the answers down and one common scale for scoring. Its golden rule is printed in the header of the file itself: the same questions and the same scale for every candidate for the same job.
- Standardise the interview: everyone applying for the same job answers the same things, so the comparison rests on answers and not on vague memories.
- Put in writing how much each criterion weighs before you meet anybody, so the score cannot drift towards the candidate you happened to like.
- Document what was asked, what the applicant answered and what you observed, on a sheet you can read again weeks later.
- Back up the decision in front of the partner, the owner or the manager who was not in the room.
- Sort out the terms of the job, that is working hours, pay, start date and place of work, so they are not left to the end and rushed.
What the template includes
The file runs to two pages and follows the route of a well-run interview. These are its real sections.
| Section | What goes there |
|---|---|
| 1. Process details | Job applied for, candidate name, interviewer, date and time, area or process, document and format, which may be in person, by phone or by video. |
| 2. Job description | The purpose of the job and the minimum requirements of education, experience and tool handling. This is the filter for the whole interview. |
| 3. Criteria to be assessed | The five criteria with their weight and the question that explores each one, plus the scale from one to five. |
| 4. Opening the interview | The text for introducing yourself, explaining how the interview will run and how long it lasts, saying you will take notes and making clear the candidate can ask questions at the end. |
| 5. Questions by competence | A table with the competence, the question, what to look for in the answer and space to write down what the candidate said. |
| 6. Experience and achievements | Questions about previous work, with room for the answer and for the evidence that supports it. |
| 7. Situational questions | Three situations already written out and space to record what the candidate would do in each. |
| 8. Candidate questions and terms | What the applicant asked and what was answered about working hours, pay, start date and place of work. |
| 9. Score and decision | A weighted score table by criterion, the total score and the decision: moves on, does not move on, second interview or on hold. |
| 10. Interviewer recommendation | Two or three sentences with the facts that support the recommendation. |
| 11. Next steps and signatures | Technical test, second interview or reference checks, who tells the candidate, when they are told, and the signatures of the interviewer and of whoever decides the hire. |
Under the signatures there is a control table with the document code, the version, the date and the person responsible, and a footer carrying the company name. Those two details are always changed before the file is used.
The five criteria and their weight
Before the conversation, the guide already carries five criteria with their weight. They read as thirty out of a hundred, twenty out of a hundred and so on until the total is complete: thirty plus twenty plus twenty plus fifteen plus fifteen make a hundred.
| Criterion | Weight | Question that explores it |
|---|---|---|
| Experience in the trade | Thirty out of a hundred | Tell me what you did in your previous job and which tools you used. |
| Technical knowledge | Twenty out of a hundred | Explain how you would handle a typical task in this job. |
| Responsibility and reliability | Twenty out of a hundred | Tell me about a time you had to meet a tight deadline. |
| Teamwork | Fifteen out of a hundred | Describe a problem that a group of you solved together. |
| Customer service | Fifteen out of a hundred | How do you respond to a customer who is upset? |
Each criterion is scored from one to five and then weighted with the weight that was fixed before the interview. For a stock assistant the heaviest weight usually sits on experience in the trade, because that is what is needed from day one; for a counter salesperson it is worth checking whether customer service should weigh as much as or more than technical knowledge. At the end the total score and the decision go in the same table, next to the name of the person who signs.
How to use it step by step
- Before the interview, write the job description: purpose and minimum requirements of education, experience and tool handling. What you write here is the filter for the whole conversation.
- Review the five criteria and their weights. If the job calls for something else, such as forklift handling or knowledge of an inventory system, swap out the criterion you need least and adjust the weights so they still add up to a hundred.
- Replace the document code in the control table with the running number your company uses and update the version and the date. In the footer, change the template company name for your own and adjust the letterhead if you have one.
- Fill in the process details before the candidate arrives: job, name, interviewer, date and time, area and format.
- Read the opening and introduce yourself. Saying how long the interview lasts, warning that you will take notes and making clear the candidate can ask questions at the end lowers the tension and improves the quality of the answers.
- Ask the questions in the same order for every candidate and write the answers in the applicant's own words, not your interpretation. In the observation column, record facts rather than impressions.
- Put the three situations to the candidate and let them think. You are not looking for the perfect answer: you want to see the order in which they reason and whether they know who they would ask for help.
- At the end, score each criterion from one to five, apply the weight, add up the total score and write the decision and the next steps. Sign with whoever decides the hire and file the document with its attachments in the area folder.
Common mistakes before signing
- Changing the questions halfway through the process. If the third candidate is asked something different, you can no longer compare and the score stops meaning anything.
- Writing impressions instead of facts. Saying that someone looks responsible is of no use; noting that in their previous job they closed the till every night and balanced the shortfall does say something.
- Scoring without the job description in front of you. With no minimum requirements written down, any answer starts to look acceptable.
- Leaving the weights for later. If the weight is adjusted once you know the candidate, the result ends up reflecting how much you liked them rather than the job.
- Forgetting the terms of the role: working hours, pay, start date and place of work. An interview that does not settle them ends in a different understanding on each side.
- Leaving the document code and the template company name in the footer as they come. The file goes out carrying somebody else's details and is no longer a usable record of the process.
When it is worth moving to a system
The template handles a one-off hire well: one job, one round of interviews, one decision. But when the business grows and in a single month you open two warehouse vacancies, one counter role and one dispatch role, keeping this process on loose sheets starts to cost real money: scores get lost, interviews are repeated because nobody remembers what was asked, and the terms of the job end up different for each person hired. That is where a system earns its place. It does not replace the guide or the interviewer's judgement: it keeps the information for each job and each person in one place, records the dates and who approved each step, and lets you check the history without opening folders. Kardex Tauro is inventory and operations control software for small and mid-sized businesses that, among other things, keeps the information on people connected to the daily work of the warehouse, the counter and dispatch, which is exactly where the need to hire usually starts. If your business is not there yet, the guide you download here is enough to start well: an orderly process is the first step, and also what can later be loaded into a system without writing everything again.
This model is an internal working format: review it with your adviser or with whoever is responsible for human resources before adopting it as the company's official procedure, and adjust it to what the business can genuinely keep up with.
This template is part of the index of Word templates, which gathers them grouped by family.
⬇ Download job interview guide (.docx)
