Interview notes

Evidence over adjectives — highlight the candidate’s actual words with <mark>.

Use this templateDocs template
Interview notesEvidence over adjectives — highlight the candidate’s actual words with <mark>.

Interview — <candidate>

Role: <role> · Stage: Onsite · Interviewer: <you> · Date: <date>

Write evidence, not adjectives. Highlight what the candidate actually said, so a reader six weeks from now can tell quote from interpretation.

Focus areas

  • <What you are actually testing for>
  • System design under real constraints

Questions & responses

Q1 — <question>

What they did, in your words. Then the evidence: the sentence they actually said.

Q2 — Design a real-time collaborative editor

Reached for CRDTs unprompted. Pushed on memory cost, they sketched compaction on the spot: you snapshot, then garbage-collect tombstones older than the last sync horizon. Specific and current.

Signals

Strengths

  • <Signal> — <the evidence for it>
  • Took feedback mid-problem and adjusted instead of defending

Concerns

  • <Signal> — <the evidence for it, and whether it's coachable>

Verdict

  • Strong yes
  • Yes
  • No

Recommendation & why: <One paragraph a hiring committee can act on without asking you a question.>