Hiring manager interview checklist: before, during and after each interview
On this page
- What this checklist prevents
- The checklist
- A filled example
- Panel and loop interviews: one extra step
- Adjusting for a first-time hiring manager
- Adjusting the checklist by interview type
- Common mistakes
- Pairing this with your scorecard
- Making this routine instead of a one-off effort
- Questions people ask
A hiring manager who interviews a few times a month does not need a training program before every interview, but skipping preparation shows up immediately: unread resumes, questions that repeat what the recruiter already asked, and a scorecard written from memory an hour later that is thinner than it should be. This checklist is the routine to run before, during and after every interview once you already know how to interview — for the one-time training that comes before that, see interviewer training checklist. For what your recruiter should be sending you to make this checklist possible, see how to prepare hiring managers for interviews.
What this checklist prevents
| Skipped step | What goes wrong |
|---|---|
| Not reading the resume beforehand | Questions the candidate already answered in writing; reads as disrespect of their time |
| Not checking what other interviewers already asked | The candidate repeats the same answer three times and nothing new gets covered |
| Not writing notes during the interview | The scorecard gets written from memory later, thinner and more prone to first-impression bias |
| Not submitting the scorecard before the debrief | Groupthink: your rating shifts to match whoever spoke first in the room |
The checklist
HIRING MANAGER INTERVIEW CHECKLIST
BEFORE (do the day before or the morning of)
[ ] Read the resume and LinkedIn profile — not skimmed, read
[ ] Read the recruiter's briefing / candidate brief, if one was sent
[ ] Confirm which competencies or must-ask questions are YOUR
responsibility (check with other panelists if it's a loop)
[ ] Prepare 2-3 follow-up questions specific to THIS candidate's
background, not just the standard question bank
[ ] Confirm the interview format, length and any tools (video link,
take-home review, whiteboard) are working before start time
[ ] Block 5 minutes after the interview on your calendar for notes
DURING
[ ] State the format and length at the start so the candidate knows
what to expect
[ ] Ask your assigned must-ask questions; do not skip because time
is short — flag it instead if you have to cut something
[ ] Take notes on what was actually said, not just a rating —
a quote or specific example is worth more later than "good"
[ ] Leave time for the candidate's own questions
[ ] Tell the candidate what happens next and roughly when
AFTER (same day, ideally within the hour)
[ ] Submit your scorecard BEFORE seeing anyone else's rating or
discussing the candidate informally
[ ] Include at least one specific example or quote per rating,
not just a number
[ ] Flag anything that needs to be checked in a reference call
[ ] Note anything you were not able to cover, for the next
interviewer or the debrief
[ ] If this was the final interview, confirm you know the debrief
time before you leave your deskA filled example
An invented interview, showing the after-section filled the way a useful scorecard note reads:
Candidate: Theo Marsh, for Senior Product Manager. My assigned area: Stakeholder management and prioritization.
Note (prioritization): Rating 4/5. "Walked through a quarter where he had to cut a planned feature after a data review showed low expected impact — described exactly how he communicated that to the sales team that had been promised it, not just that he 'made the call.'"
Note (stakeholder management): Rating 3/5. "Good on peer-level stakeholders. When I asked about pushing back on an exec's pet idea, the example was thinner — said he 'found a way to make it work' without explaining what changed. Worth another data point in reference checks."
Not covered: Did not get to a second prioritization example due to time; flagged for the debrief in case it matters to the final decision.
Notice the rating comes with the evidence that produced it, and the lower score on stakeholder management is not disqualifying by itself — it is flagged as a specific thing to verify elsewhere, which is more useful to the debrief than a number alone.
Panel and loop interviews: one extra step
In a panel or a multi-interviewer loop, add a step before the before-list: a two-minute check with the recruiter or lead interviewer on who owns which competency, so two people do not both ask about leadership while nobody asks about the technical depth the role actually needs. If your organization does not already split questions this way, see how to prepare hiring managers for interviews for how the briefing call is supposed to set this up in advance.
Adjusting for a first-time hiring manager
If you are new to interviewing, run through the first-time hiring manager interview guide once before relying on this shorter checklist, and keep the standard question bank open during your first several interviews rather than trying to improvise follow-ups from memory. The "before" and "after" steps here matter even more for a first-time interviewer, since there is no built-up instinct yet for what a strong versus weak answer sounds like without notes to check against.
Adjusting the checklist by interview type
| Interview type | What to add or change |
|---|---|
| Phone screen | Add a step to confirm basic logistics (compensation range, location, notice period) before the deeper conversation, so neither side wastes time on a mismatch that surfaces later. |
| Technical or working session | Test any shared tools (code editor, whiteboard link) five minutes before, not at start time, since a broken tool eats into the candidate's time, not yours. |
| Final-round or executive interview | Add a step to review every prior interviewer's scorecard beforehand, so your questions probe what is still uncertain rather than repeating ground already covered well. |
| Virtual interview across time zones | Confirm the time zone explicitly in the calendar invite and again in a reminder message; a missed time zone conversion is one of the most common causes of a no-show that is not actually a no-show. |
Common mistakes
- Reading the resume in the two minutes before the call starts. Produces surface-level questions the candidate has answered before, elsewhere, in writing.
- Rating from memory an hour or a day later. Specific details fade fast; a rating written same-day from notes is measurably more useful than one written from a vague overall impression the next morning.
- Discussing the candidate informally before submitting your own scorecard. Even a hallway comment ("seemed really strong") anchors the next person's independent rating before they have written their own.
- Treating the checklist as optional once you're experienced. Experience reduces how long each step takes; it does not remove the value of doing them.
- Not flagging what you didn't get to cover. Silence reads as "covered and fine," which can leave a real gap unexamined all the way to an offer.
Pairing this with your scorecard
This checklist and your scorecard do different jobs: the checklist is the process you run, the scorecard is the record it produces. If your organization does not already have a structured scorecard format, see interview scorecard template for one with rating definitions and an evidence field, so the "note" step above has somewhere specific to go rather than becoming a free-form paragraph that is harder to compare against other interviewers' notes on the same candidate.
Making this routine instead of a one-off effort
A checklist followed once because someone asked you to is not the same as a habit. Keep this list somewhere you will actually see it before every interview — pinned in your calendar invite, taped next to your monitor, whatever survives contact with a busy week — rather than relying on remembering it from a document you read once during onboarding. The five minutes this adds per interview is consistently smaller than the time lost redoing a scorecard, or a reference check, because something was not covered or written down while it was fresh.
Questions people ask
How is this different from an interviewer training checklist?
An interviewer training checklist is a one-time sign-off before someone interviews alone at all: shadowing, legal basics, a training session. This is the shorter checklist a hiring manager already cleared to interview runs for every single interview, before, during and after.
How long should running this checklist take?
The before-interview steps take about ten minutes if the recruiter's briefing arrived on time. The during-interview steps are things to keep in view, not separate tasks. The after-interview steps take five to ten minutes if done immediately, and much longer if delayed until memory has faded.
What if I do not have time to complete the before-interview steps?
Do the must-ask questions and the resume review at minimum; skip a step rather than skip preparation entirely, and tell your recruiter you were rushed so they can flag whether the interview needs to be redone or supplemented. An unprepared interview usually costs more time later than the ten minutes it would have taken.
Should this checklist be different for a panel interview?
The individual steps are the same, but add one: confirm with the other panelists beforehand who is covering which questions, so the candidate is not asked the same thing twice while another area goes uncovered. See the panel interview note below.