At Ellevation, we take hiring seriously—because the quality of our team directly impacts the success of our mission. One of the core tenets of our approach is that hiring decisions must be grounded in evidence, not instincts, performance, or vibes.
Without a structured process, interviews tend to measure how well someone interviews. This includes how confident they seem, how articulate they are, and how easily they connect with the team. These traits, while superficially impressive, are poor predictors of on-the-job performance. Relying on them not only weakens our hiring accuracy, it also introduces bias into the process.
This article will walk through how we use a rigorous, repeatable, and scalable approach to evidence-based hiring at Ellevation.
1. Start with Clear, Role-Specific Evidence
Our process begins by crafting a detailed job scorecard—a practice popularized by Geoff Smart and Randy Street in Who. Unlike a traditional job description, a scorecard focuses on what success looks like in the role. It outlines:
- The key outcomes and impact expected from the position.
- The skills and experiences required to achieve those outcomes.
This approach shifts the focus from hiring for a generic job archetype to hiring for measurable success. It also aligns stakeholders —- hiring managers, people operations, and interviewers —- on what we’re looking for from the start.
2. Design Interviews to Uncover That Evidence
Once the scorecard is in place, the next step is to design interviews that deliberately surface the evidence we care about.
For each interview:
- Which specific skills or experiences are you giving the candidate a chance to demonstrate?
- What type of evidence should the interviewer be looking for? What does success or concern look like at different levels?
This structure ensures that interviews aren’t just casual conversations. Rather, they are purpose-built opportunities to test for role-specific capabilities. It also makes our evaluations more consistent, fair, and predictive of future success.
3. Distinguish Facts from Opinions
Effective hiring requires disciplined thinking. That means asking two critical questions throughout the process:
- What evidence do we have that this candidate can do the job?: this ties directly to the scorecard: did the candidate demonstrate the core competencies (e.g. Technical Stewardship, Strategic Thinking) we’ve identified as critical?
- What evidence do we have that this candidate cannot do the job?: these are the red or yellow flags—signals that something may be missing or misaligned. But here, we must distinguish between:
- Negative evidence: something concrete we learned that raises concern.
- Lack of evidence: something we simply didn’t observe.
Lack of evidence is not the same as negative evidence, and it’s important not to conflate the two. Doing this well isn’t easy and requires training and practice, but it is essential to building an effective interview team.
4. Conduct Structured, Collaborative Debriefs
Even a strong interview process can be undermined by a weak debrief. That’s why we emphasize structured debriefs that synthesize the evidence collected across interviews. Interviewers share what they observed, not how they “felt” about a candidate. All evidence connects back to the scorecard.
If we don’t uncover the evidence we need to in a round, we tailor subsequent conversations with the candidate to give them a chance to show us that evidence.
This disciplined practice prevents groupthink, reduces bias, and leads to stronger, more consistent hiring decisions.
5. Let Evidence Drive Onboarding and Beyond
An evidence-based mindset doesn’t end with the offer letter. The same scorecard that guided hiring should inform onboarding and performance management. When there’s clarity about what success looks like from day one, new hires are set up to thrive and managers are better equipped to support them.
By focusing on evidence at every stage we hire more effectively, more fairly, and more confidently. This is how we build a team capable of achieving Ellevation’s mission and how we ensure we’re doing it in a way that is aligned with our values.
