Setting up a scorecard when drafting a vacancy, allows you (and others) to benchmark candidates against your job criteria. This is particularly useful when comparing applications and evaluating their suitability for the role.
When screening applicants after an interview, you can also request and use references to rate candidates as part of your pre-employment checks.
Once a reference is completed by a referee, a score out of 10 is created for the candidate overall for specific capabilities.
This tells you how desirable candidates are based on previous performance. It also shows how likely an employer is to work with this candidate again in the future.
Shortlisting applicants against scorecard criteria
Scorecards help hiring managers or interview panellists assess all job applicants against the same criteria, making shortlisting fair, consistent and evidence‑based.
Simply, follow these steps after logging into your Staff Management Application Tracking System (your system).
1. Set up your scorecard criteria
Start by adding the criteria you want to assess candidates within future scorecards.
- Under Manage settings, go to Manage scorecard criteria.
- You’ll see a list of all existing criteria. This is where you can decide whether to use:
- Admin criteria: custom criteria created by you or a member of your team.
- Default criteria: available by default to all schools to use if relevant. They can be deleted from a scorecard if not applicable to the job.
- To add your own scorecard criteria, select Add new criteria, give it a descriptive name, then Add criteria.
Your criteria will now be visible when assigning scorecard criteria to future job vacancies.
2. Add or edit a scorecard in your vacancy
You can add a scorecard when creating or editing a draft job vacancy.
- Go to Connect.
- If you’re creating a new vacancy, select Create a scorecard, then select or add criteria that apply and Create scorecard.
- If editing an existing job vacancy, open it by selecting the settings cog
, then Edit.
- Under Scorecard near the bottom of the form, select Add scorecard or Edit scorecard and select the criteria that apply.
3. Complete scorecards when reviewing applications
You and other recruiters on your panel can assess an applicants’ suitability by completing a scorecard.
This helps benchmark them against your criteria to decide who to shortlist for an interview. To complete a scorecard when reviewing an application:
- Open the vacancy, search for the applicant and select Complete scorecard.
- Here you’ll see any existing ratings created by you previously. If none exist, select Complete scorecard.
- Here you can rate the applicant against each criteria by selecting one option: Not evidenced, Unsatisfactory, Satisfactory, or Outstanding.
- Add a note if you’d like to qualify your rating if helpful, then select Submit scores.
Once a scorecard is completed, the applicant’s overall rating is updated to reflect the average across all scorecards completed.
4. View and compare scorecards when shortlisting applicants
While you can see an Average scorecard rating for each applicant, you may want to compare notes or ratings before deciding who to shortlist.
To compare scorecard assessments from all reviewers:
- Open the vacancy, search for the applicant and select Complete scorecard.
- To see a summary of the criteria and an average rating for each, select View scores.
- To view all ratings and comments, select the downwards arrow
to show all scores.
Requesting references as part of pre-employment checks
If you decide to progress a candidate to Pre-employment checks after interviews, you can request or check a reference at anytime.
Simply go to Connect, and follow these steps:
- Open the candidates’ profile by selecting Show more about this applicant.
- To access any referees and contact details provided, select References. If none exist yet, you can Request referee details and send an email to the candidate to complete this task.
If you haven’t heard from the candidate within a set time, you can also resend this request as a reminder.
- Once the candidate has added referee details, they’ll appear in the candidates’ profile. Contact them to complete your screening checks using your preferred method.
If you’d like to record any other details provided by the referee about the candidate, perhaps verbally, you can add them as School notes.
What data does the reference check form request?
The reference check form allows you to collect useful data to ensure compliance and safeguarding requirements are met. This generally includes:
- Referee contact details, their job role and the time they worked with the candidate.
- Whether the referee would work with the candidate again.
- Whether the referee is aware of any situations that may compromise the candidate’s ethical or professional standing.
- Whether the referee knows of any child protection concerns involving the candidate.
- Ratings for teaching and learning indicators on a five‑point scale (Inconsistent, Developing, Proficient, Accomplished, Lead).
- Ratings for extracurricular indicators on the same five‑point scale.
- Ratings for professionalism indicators on the same five‑point scale.
- Additional comments (up to 500 characters).
Review references and compare referee ratings
To view a reference from within an applicants’ profile, go to Connect > select a vacancy to open > Search or Filter to find a candidate.
You can review existing ratings by viewing the:
- Overall referee rating: In the candidates’ profile card (in the search list), you’ll see an accumulative score out of 10 based on all references.
Individual references: select View application > References.
You’ll see individual and overall scores for how a referee rates this candidate.
You can also view and download the full reference provided by selecting View Reference. This allows you to see the referees’ details, all feedback provided, (including any comments), and rubric ratings provided.
This is a powerful tool for screening candidates based on previous performance.
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