How long to keep interview notes, scorecards and recordings

In the US, the federal baseline for interview notes is one year: under 29 CFR 1602.14, employers covered by Title VII, the ADA and GINA must preserve any personnel or employment record having to do with hiring for one year from the date the record was made or the personnel action was taken, whichever is later. Federal contractors of a certain size keep records two years, California requires four years and Colorado five, and once a discrimination charge is filed everything relevant must be kept until the charge or lawsuit is finally resolved. Most employers set a single default longer than the minimum and apply it to notes, scorecards, transcripts and recordings alike.

Below: what counts as an interview record, the federal and state minimums with sources, what a litigation hold changes, how the UK and EU differ, a retention schedule you can copy, and a deletion checklist for the places copies actually hide. For what should be in the notes in the first place, see what not to write in interview notes.

What counts as an interview record

The regulation is broad. It covers "any personnel or employment record made or kept by an employer", including requests for reasonable accommodation, application forms submitted by applicants and other records having to do with hiring. In practice that reaches:

• Handwritten and typed interview notes, including the ones still in a notebook on your desk.
• Scorecards, rating sheets and completed interview guides.
• ATS comments, candidate summaries and submittals.
• Emails, chat messages and debrief notes discussing a candidate.
• Recordings and transcripts of screens and interviews, where you make them.
• Assessment and test results used in the decision.
• Accommodation requests, which 29 CFR 1602.14 names expressly.

One consequence is worth sitting with: a record you never create is a record you never have to keep, produce or defend. That is a legitimate reason to decide, deliberately, what you capture. A recording of every screen is a bigger obligation than a scorecard with quotes, and a transcript sitting in a vendor's cloud is a bigger one still.

The federal minimums

Read the Title VII rule carefully, because the phrase that catches people out is "whichever occurs later". A note written in March about a candidate rejected in June starts its year in June. The regulation also spells out that relevant records after a charge include application forms or test papers completed by an unsuccessful applicant and by all other candidates for the same position, so a complaint by one candidate pulls in the file for everyone you interviewed for that role.

States that require longer

These are examples, not a national list. Other states set their own periods, and industry regulators (financial services, healthcare, transportation, education) add rules of their own for the roles they cover. If you hire in several states, pick the longest period that applies to you and use it everywhere. Running four schedules at once is how records get destroyed early by accident.

What a legal hold changes

Retention schedules stop applying the moment a claim is realistic. Once a charge, a lawyer's letter or a credible internal complaint arrives, relevant records must be preserved regardless of what the schedule says, and that includes electronic records. Under Federal Rule of Civil Procedure 37(e), if electronically stored information that should have been preserved in the anticipation or conduct of litigation is lost because a party failed to take reasonable steps to preserve it, a court may order measures to cure the prejudice, and where a party acted with the intent to deprive another of the information, may instruct a jury to presume it was unfavorable, or dismiss the case.

1. Who issues the hold: HR or counsel, in writing, naming the roles, candidates and date range.
2. What gets suspended: ATS auto-purge rules, email retention policies, recording and transcript auto-deletion, and any routine clear-out of shared drives.
3. What interviewers do: hand over notes, including notebooks and personal files, and stop editing them. Never tidy up a note after a complaint; that is the fact pattern that turns a defensible decision into a spoliation argument.
4. When it lifts: only when counsel says so, in writing.

Outside the US

UK and EU data protection law sets no fixed number. The storage limitation principle requires you to keep personal data no longer than you need it and to document the period you chose. The ICO's guidance on keeping recruitment records says you must not keep information for longer than you need it, does not specify timescales, and advises against keeping information beyond the statutory period in which a legal claim can be brought. For discrimination claims in Great Britain, section 123 of the Equality Act 2010 sets a general time limit of three months from the act complained of, or such other period as the tribunal thinks just and equitable, and other claims have their own limitation periods. Most UK employers therefore land on six to twelve months for unsuccessful candidates, with a documented reason. The detail, including lawful basis and notices, is in recording interviews under UK GDPR.

In California, retention also has a disclosure side: the CCPA requires telling applicants how long you intend to keep each category of personal information, which is covered in CCPA and job applicant data.

A retention schedule you can copy

Fill in your own periods after checking them. The "common default" column is what many employers choose when they want one number that clears the federal minimum with room to spare; it is a choice, not a legal requirement, and it is deliberately not the maximum, because keeping records forever creates its own risk.

INTERVIEW RECORDS RETENTION SCHEDULE — [organization] — [date]
Owner: [name, role]        Reviewed: [annually, next review date]
Longest rule that applies to us: [e.g. CA 4 years / contractor 2 years]

RECORD                        MINIMUM        OUR PERIOD   CLOCK STARTS
Application and resume        1 yr federal   [2 yrs]      decision date
Screening notes               1 yr federal   [2 yrs]      decision date
Interview notes + scorecards  1 yr federal   [2 yrs]      decision date
Structured guide / rubric     1 yr federal   [2 yrs]      decision date
Assessment and test results   1 yr federal   [2 yrs]      decision date
Interview recordings          treat as above [90 days]    interview date
Interview transcripts         treat as above [1 yr]       interview date
Accommodation requests        named in 1602.14 [2 yrs]    request date
Background check + adverse
  action notices              [per FCRA/state] [ ]        decision date
Offer and rejection letters   1 yr federal   [2 yrs]      send date
Hired candidates' file        [per policy]   [term + 7]   end of employment
I-9 (hires only)              3 yrs after hire / 1 yr after
                              employment ends, whichever is later

HOLDS: any charge, claim, audit or internal complaint suspends
deletion for all records relating to that role and requisition
until [counsel] confirms in writing that the hold is lifted.

DELETION: quarterly, run by [owner], recorded in [log], covering
every system in the list below.

Deleting properly: where the copies hide

A retention schedule that only covers the ATS is not a retention schedule. Interview records spread further than anything else in hiring, because six people touch them in one week. Work through this list when you set the schedule and again each time you run a deletion cycle:

• The ATS, including attachments, notes fields and archived requisitions.
• Email and chat: debrief threads, forwarded resumes, submittals to clients.
• Interviewers' own files: notebooks, local documents, notes apps, phone photos of a whiteboard.
• Shared drives and folders where a scorecard template was filled in and left.
• Meeting platforms: cloud recordings and auto-generated transcripts that keep their own retention settings.
• Any note-taking or transcription vendor, whose retention period becomes your effective retention period.
• Backups, which usually cannot be selectively purged; note in the schedule how long they persist.

That vendor line is the one most often missed. If a tool uploads interview audio or stores transcripts on its servers, deleting your copy does not end the retention question; the contract and the vendor's settings do. Interview Signal was built the other way round: transcripts, quotes, candidate names, notes and submittals stay on the recruiter's computer and are never uploaded, so they are covered by your own schedule and your own deletion cycle. The details are on our security page.

Running it on a recruiting desk

• Name an owner. Retention with no owner means every file is kept forever or deleted at random.
• Write the schedule down and date it. An undocumented practice is hard to defend and impossible to train.
• Agency recruiters: check the client contract. Terms often say what happens to candidate records at the end of an engagement, and the client's obligations may be longer than yours.
• Handle deletion requests centrally. Candidates do ask, and the answer depends on the law and on whether the record is needed for a legal obligation.
• Review annually, and after any change to the states you hire in or the contracts you hold.
• Log each deletion cycle: what was covered, by whom, on what date. The log is the evidence that the schedule is real.

Checklist

• You know the longest rule that applies to you: federal one year, contractor two, California four, Colorado five, or another.
• One default period is used across notes, scorecards, transcripts and recordings.
• The clock starts at the later of the record being made and the hiring decision.
• Recording and transcript retention is set deliberately, and is shorter than the notes if you want it to be.
• Every system that holds a copy is named in the schedule, vendors included.
• A hold process exists, is written, and suspends auto-deletion everywhere.
• Nobody edits or deletes a note after a complaint.
• Deletion cycles are run on a date and logged.