All Collections
Interview templates
Interview criteria & competencies
Interview criteria & competencies

How to add new – and manage existing – interview criteria

Josh Spencer avatar
Written by Josh Spencer
Updated over a week ago

Alva's interview function helps interviewers structure their interviews to assess the competencies relevant to a specific role. When building any interview template and associated scorecard, you will be asked to select the interview criteria you wish to use.

Each interview criterion consists of a competency, suggested interview question(s), and scoring guidelines.

The Interview criteria page – located within the assessment tab, as shown below – is where you can manage all of your organisation's criteria. You can think of it as the competency framework or library from which all interviews are built.

In the event that your organization doesn't have its own competency framework and associated interview questions – do not fear – we have already provided you with one to get started! You will see the Alva symbol beside these.

In the event that you already have a competency framework in place or are missing relevant interview criteria that you would need, add your own custom criteria and edit/delete the Alva default criteria as you see fit.


Creating new criteria

When viewing the Interview Criteria page, you'll find the list of criteria available to your organisation. You can click on each criterion to see the definition, associated interview questions, and scoring guidelines.

To create a new criterion, click on the Create New button in the top right corner. To begin with, you will need to specify its name and give a brief description.


Editing the criteria details

It is important to be as descriptive as you can when outlining the criterion. A clear outline ensures you and your team are aligned on what the criterion is and how to evaluate it.

Description:

The description helps interviewers align on the definition of the criterion. What specific skill or behaviour are you looking to evaluate?

Interview Questions:

Based on best practices and research findings on how to achieve the highest possible validity of your interview, we suggest you go with a Situation-Behaviour-Result (SBR) based question that is tied to the specific competency you want to assess. E.g. “Tell me about a recent situation in which you […]. How did you go about this? What was the outcome?”

Scoring Guidelines:

Scoring guidelines are critical for aligning the ratings and the expectations of all interviewers. Without clear scoring guidelines, there would be no way to anchor the assessment of multiple interviewers who may otherwise have varying ideas of what poor, average, or strong examples look like. We recommend using a scale from Lacking to Exceptional, with a few steps in between.


Did this answer your question?