Recording Decisions

Most hiring decisions are recorded as a score and a name. That is enough for nobody: not for a challenge, not for an audit, not for improving the process.

Putting the safeguards in “Recording Decisions” into practice also requires a documented operating routine. Teams can use the detailed explainer to understand where assessment work consumes time and to keep a consistent audit trail, while treating activity data as process evidence rather than as a proxy for candidate ability; proportionality, access controls and human review still come first.

For an independent benchmark, compare the process with ICO employment data guidance; the useful test is whether the local method remains job-related, proportionate and explainable.

What to record

The score on each criterion, per assessor, before discussion.

A short note of the evidence behind each score: what was said or produced.

The decision and who made it.

Any adjustment provided, recorded separately from the assessment.

And the reason for the outcome, in a sentence somebody else could understand.

Why evidence notes matter

A score alone cannot be defended. If a rejected candidate asks why, "scored three out of five on problem-solving" answers nothing.

A note saying what they actually said is an answer, and it is also what makes calibration possible.

And it disciplines the assessor: writing evidence rather than impression changes what you attend to during the assessment.

Keeping it usable

A single record per candidate, not notes scattered across inboxes.

Structured enough to count: scores in fields rather than in prose.

And retrievable by role and by round, because the audit note depends on being able to pull twelve months of data.

What not to record

Anything about protected characteristics, except where collected separately for monitoring and kept apart from the assessment record.

Personal remarks, however informal the channel. Messages and chat are records too and have surfaced in disputes.

Speculation about circumstances: family plans, health, whether somebody would fit in socially.

The test: would you be comfortable if the candidate read it? They may be entitled to.

Retention

General orientation, not legal advice; periods differ by jurisdiction.

Long enough to handle a challenge, which is usually months rather than weeks.

Not indefinitely. Candidate data has a purpose and it expires.

Set a period, write it down, and actually delete.

Using the records

For calibration: comparing how assessors scored the same evidence.

For the audit: pass rates, group differences, dropout.

And for validation: scores against how hires performed, which requires that the scores still exist when you want to look, which requires deciding to keep them for that purpose.

If a decision is challenged

Contemporaneous, specific notes are a strong position.

Scores with no evidence behind them are a weak one.

And notes written after the challenge arrived are worse than none, which is why the habit matters rather than the intention.

What to check

Do your records contain evidence or only scores?

Are individual assessor scores kept, or only the agreed outcome?

Would you be comfortable if a candidate read their record?

And is there a stated retention period that somebody actually applies?

The point

Record evidence rather than scores alone.

A score cannot be defended; a note of what was said can.

Underlying all of this

Almost everything in this collection reduces to one discipline: write down what the job requires, assess that thing directly, record the evidence, and look at your own outcomes afterwards. None of it requires buying anything, and organisations that do those four things consistently outperform ones running longer processes built from instruments chosen before the requirements were known.

The recurring pattern

The recurring failure across every section here is the same: measuring what is convenient rather than what matters, then never checking whether it predicted anything. The check is an afternoon of work once a year, and it is the step that separates a process that improves from one that merely persists.