How to take interview notes as a hiring manager

To take good interview notes, write down what the candidate said and did, not what you think of them: short exact phrases, numbers, what they did first, the result, and what they could not answer. Organize the page by question so each note already sits next to the competency it is evidence for, use a shorthand so you are looking at the candidate most of the time, and turn the notes into a scorecard within the hour, before the details fade.

This page covers what to capture, a notes page to copy, a shorthand, how to write without losing the conversation, typing etiquette on video calls, a filled example, and the routine that gets you from notes to a submitted scorecard.

What to capture

Your notes have one job: to let you rate each competency on evidence, and defend that rating in the debrief. The U.S. Office of Personnel Management's structured interview guide says notes should record observable behaviors and verbal responses and be detailed enough to document the reasoning for each rating. In practice that means:

• Short exact phrases. The claim, the result, anything surprising. Five words in quotation marks beat a paragraph of paraphrase.
• Numbers, marked as stated. Team size, budget, volume, quota, timelines. You may want to verify them later.
• "I" or "we". Who did the thing. A story told entirely in "we" is a prompt for "what was your part?"
• What they did first. Asked a question, gathered data, called someone, escalated. The order of actions often shows more than the outcome.
• The result. What happened, and whether they know.
• What they could not answer. A gap you do not write down becomes a gap nobody remembers.
• Their questions for you. What a candidate asks about says a lot about what they will care about in the job.

Skip anything the resume already says, your verdicts ("weak", "great"), and anything about the candidate's personal life, appearance or background. That last category is covered in detail, with rewrites, in what not to write in interview notes.

Set up your notes page before the interview

A blank page produces a chronological stream that you have to sort afterwards. A page laid out by question does the sorting for you. Copy this, one per candidate, with your questions filled in from the interview scorecard:

INTERVIEW NOTES
Candidate: [name]          Role: [title]
Date: [date]               Stage: [round]
My competencies: [C1] [C2] [C3]
Told candidate I am taking notes: [ ]

Q1 [question]                                      for [C1]
  Situation:
  What they did (I / we):
  Result:
  Exact phrases:
  Follow-ups I asked:
  Missing:

Q2 [question]                                      for [C2]
  (same fields)

Q3 [question]                                      for [C3]
  (same fields)

Their questions for me:
For the next interviewer to probe:
Not covered (ran out of time):
Finished at: [time]

At the start, tell the candidate you will be taking notes. OPM's guide includes this in how to open an interview. One sentence is enough: "I'll be taking notes so I can represent your answers accurately to the team, so if I look down, I'm still listening."

A shorthand that keeps your eyes on the candidate

You do not need a formal system, just a handful of marks you use every time, so a note written in three seconds still means something an hour later.

The "~" matters most. When you write the scorecard, anything marked "~" stays a paraphrase and never gets quotation marks. That one habit prevents the most damaging kind of note: a quote the candidate did not say.

Writing without losing the conversation

The usual failure of a thorough note-taker is getting every word and missing the conversation. These habits help.

1. Ask, then listen before you write. The first part of an answer is context. Wait for the situation to take shape, then start writing when they get to what they did.
2. Write nouns and verbs. "cut archive import, told PM Tue" is a complete note.
3. Save exact words for what you might quote: claims, results, admissions, numbers.
4. Use your follow-up question as writing time. Ask it, and finish the previous note while they think.
5. Park follow-ups in the margin with "?" instead of interrupting mid-story.
6. Do not write verdicts during the interview. Writing "weak" at minute five makes you listen for evidence that agrees. OPM's guide lists relying on first impressions as a common interviewing mistake.
7. Put the pen down for hard stories. If a candidate is describing something difficult, look at them. You can fill in two lines afterwards.
8. Look up regularly. OPM's guide recommends periodic eye contact while taking notes, both to show interest and to see how the candidate is responding.

Laptop, paper and video-call etiquette

• In person, paper is usually better. It is quiet and does not put a screen between you. If you use a laptop, keep it low and to the side.
• On video, type, but place the notes window right next to your camera so your eyes stay close to the lens.
• Use a quiet keyboard, or mute while the candidate gives a long answer and unmute before you speak. Loud typing during someone's answer sounds like a verdict being written.
• Turn off notifications and close chat. A candidate can see your eyes move to a message.
• Never type notes into the meeting chat or a shared document the candidate can see.
• In a panel, split the work. One person leads the questions while another captures, and swap by section. How to divide a panel is covered in panel interview tips for interviewers.

A filled example: raw notes to evidence

Invented notes from a warehouse operations manager interview, written live with the shorthand above:

Q1 week with more work than time                    [C1 prioritization]
T04  peak season, 2 sites, lost a shift lead
     I: moved returns processing to nights
     I: told sales custom orders ~2 days late, before customers found out
     "I'd rather call the customer than let them find out"
     -> outbound shipped on time (st); returns backlog ~1 wk
     ? who approved nights -> "my director, I brought her the cost"
     x how she measured the backlog

Q2 improving a process                              [C2 process improvement]
T15  W: "we re-slotted the top 200 SKUs"
     ? your part -> I: pulled pick data, proposed layout; IT made WMS change
     -> pick times down "about a fifth" first month (st)
     * knew the before/after numbers without looking

Q3 difficult conversation                           [C3 managing people]
T31  ~ shift lead late 3 times in 2 weeks
     I: met same day, asked what was going on
     [personal reason given, not noted]
     I: agreed schedule change + expectations in writing
     -> on time since, "six months now"
     * put expectations in writing

Her questions: how peak staffing is planned; which WMS
Next interviewer: probe how she tracks backlog; largest team (14, st)

Twenty minutes later, the first competency on the scorecard reads:

Notice the line in Q3: the candidate gave a personal reason for the shift lead's lateness and the note records that one was given, not what it was. It was not relevant to the competency, and it has no place in a hiring record. How to turn the rest into ratings that hold up is the method in evidence-based interview feedback.

Turn notes into a scorecard within the hour

OPM's guide says that immediately after the interview, the interviewer should review their notes and rate the candidate. The simplest way to make that happen is to book the calendar slot for the interview plus twenty minutes.

1. Fill the gaps (5 minutes). Expand fragments while you still remember them. Check every quotation mark; if you are not sure it was word for word, change it to "~".
2. Tag each note to a competency (5 minutes). Count each piece of evidence once, under the competency it best shows.
3. Rate against the anchors (5 to 10 minutes). Read the anchor, pick the level, write why, and write what kept it from the level above.
4. Recommendation and handoff (2 minutes). Your recommendation, and what the next interviewer should probe.
5. Submit, then read other feedback. Reading a colleague's scorecard first changes your own. The interview debrief template depends on independent scorecards.

If you interview rarely and want the whole before-during-after picture, the first-time hiring manager interview guide puts note-taking in context.

Recordings, transcripts, and where notes are kept

A recording or transcript changes what notes are for, not whether you need them. Get consent before you record; the rules differ by state and country, and our consent guide and interview recording consent script cover the wording. With a transcript running, your notes become a list of moments rather than a record: the time marks of key answers, what you saw that audio misses (an exercise, a diagram), and your follow-ups. Interview Signal, for example, shows a live transcript during the call and produces a scorecard whose evidence quotes are checked against it, so the notes you still take are about what you observed and what to follow up.

After the interview, treat notes as company records:

• Put them in your ATS or the system your company uses, not a personal notebook, phone photo or personal drive.
• Follow your company's policy on whether handwritten originals are kept once they are typed up, and never discard notes after a complaint or legal hold.
• Write every note as if the candidate, your HR team, or a lawyer might read it one day, because in some cases they can. Why, and what that rules out, is in what not to write in interview notes.