What interviewers write on the scorecard runs about 200 words, typed within an hour.
On this page
They hold a verdict, a signal rating, and an evidence box quoting what you said.
The evidence box is where candidates are made and lost. Your job in the hour is to give 1 interviewer a quotable sentence.
You will never attend the debrief where it gets read.
I have written hundreds of those 200-word blocks and read hundreds more in debriefs.
Candidates prepare for the conversation and never for the write-up.
The write-up is the artifact that actually travels.
What does a scorecard look like?
Four or 5 signals for a coding round, each with an evidence box.
Then a verdict of strong hire, hire, no hire or strong no hire.
The signals are problem comprehension, solution design, implementation, verification and communication.
An interviewer who cannot fill the evidence box writes something vague. Vague notes lose in a debrief.
| Signal | What the interviewer is asking themselves |
|---|---|
| Problem comprehension | Did they understand it before starting? |
| Solution design | Did they choose an approach and say why? |
| Implementation | Does the code do what they said it does? |
| Verification | Did they test it, or wait for me to find the bug? |
| Communication | Could I follow their thinking without asking? |
What interviewers write on the scorecard, line by line
Specific ones, good or bad.
Asked about input size before choosing an approach. Then ruled out sorting because n was up to 10 million.
Or: started coding at minute 3. I still do not know what problem they thought they were solving.
The most common line is the worst one: seemed fine, solved it, nothing stood out.
These are real shapes of sentences, from real write-ups. I have changed the details.
Good, and specific
- “Asked about input size before choosing an approach, then ruled out sorting because n was up to 10^7.”
- “Found their own off-by-one by tracing the example, before I said anything.”
- “Named the tradeoff explicitly: more memory for 1 pass instead of 2.”
- “When I pushed back on the schema, they changed it and explained what that cost.”
Bad, and equally specific
- “Started coding at minute 3. I still do not know what problem they thought they were solving.”
- “Silent for roughly 4 minutes. I could not tell if they were stuck or thinking.”
- “Said the complexity was O(n log n). It was O(n^2). Did not catch it when I asked them to walk an example.”
- “Answered a different question than the one I asked, twice.”
The worst kind, and the most common
- “Seemed fine. Solved it. Nothing stood out.”
In a debrief, “nothing stood out” reads as no hire.
The room has to choose between candidates. This one gave nobody anything to argue with.
Why do vague notes sink you?
Because the interviewer with specific evidence speaks with confidence. The one with impressions speaks with hedges.
Specific evidence wins the room whether it is positive or negative.
If nobody has specific positive evidence about you, the decision drifts toward no.
No is the safer default, and nobody has to defend it.
The debrief is 4 interviewers, 1 candidate, 40 minutes.
“They caught their own bug at minute 22, here is the line.”
That beats “I mean, they were okay” every time.
How do you give them something to write?
Five habits, all of them about making thinking visible enough to record. Say the constraint out loud before you use it.
Name the tradeoff rather than the choice. Test before you are asked. Answer the question that was actually asked.
And close the loop by saying what you would do with more time.
Say the constraint out loud before you use it
“n is up to a million, so anything quadratic is out.” Now that sentence exists in the notes.
Name the tradeoff
“I will use a hash map. That is O(n) extra memory, and I am spending it to avoid a second pass.”
1 sentence, and it demonstrates judgement rather than recall.
Test before you are asked
Walk 1 real example through your code, out loud, index by index.
If you find a bug, say so plainly and fix it.
“Found their own bug” is one of the strongest lines a write-up can contain.
Answer the question that was asked
If you need to go elsewhere first, say so.
“Let me answer that in a second, I want to check 1 thing first.” Otherwise it reads as evasion.
Close the loop
At the end, say what you would do with more time.
“With another 20 minutes I would handle the concurrent case, which would corrupt the counter.”
That is a sentence about your standards, and it gets written down.
Why is the behavioural scorecard different?
Because it scores against a company’s written values. The scorecard has a line for what you did.
Telling a story about a team produces no evidence about you.
Say I more than you are comfortable with. Give every story a number.
A number is quotable. A description of a process is not.
Say “I” without taking credit for other people’s work. “We decided to cut scope” produces no evidence about you.
“I proposed cutting the reporting module, and I was wrong about the follow-up cost.” That produces plenty.
“Reduced the deploy cycle from 4 a week to over 10” survives a debrief. “Improved our deployment process” does not.
What this looks like from the hiring side
Teams should write the scorecard before they write the job ad.
The same logic that makes a hiring process fair makes it predictable for you.
If a company cannot tell you what they are scoring, they do not know either.
That is worth noticing during the loop, not after you join.
Common questions
Can you ask to see the scorecard after an interview?
Ask, and expect a summary rather than the document. Most companies will not release the raw notes. Some will walk you through the signals if you ask the recruiter directly. A company that cannot tell you what it scored you on did not know beforehand.
Does the interviewer write the notes during or after the interview?
Both, and the during part matters to you. Most interviewers type fragments while you talk and turn them into prose within the hour. Anything you say that is quotable gets captured in the moment. Anything that needed reconstructing from memory arrives softer and vaguer in the write-up.
Is it bad if the interviewer types while you are talking?
It is the best sign available. Silence and no typing means nothing is landing. If you say something and hear keys, that sentence made it into the record. Some candidates find it rude. It is the mechanism that decides the outcome. Give them more to type.
What does strong hire actually mean?
It means the interviewer will argue for you in the room. And has the evidence to do it. Hire means they will not object. The gap between those two is about how much specific material you gave them. That is why nothing stood out lands as a rejection.
The short version
The write-up decides, not the hour.
Say your constraints and tradeoffs out loud so they land in the notes. Test your own code before you are asked.
Give 1 number per story.
Give the interviewer at least 1 sentence they can quote. In a room you will never be in.
You can see what your own scorecard looks like.
That is what a mock interview produces.
The same filled-in scorecard a real panel would write, within 24 hours, for 100 euro.