Restaurant Interview Scorecard
Two questions: which job are you hiring for, and how many minutes does the interview really have? The tool puts the competencies that job is hired on in order, fills in the questions that fit your time, tells you what a good answer sounds like — and names the competencies you will not reach tonight and should watch on the trial shift instead.
How it works
- 1
Pick the job
Server, runner, host, bar, cook, chef, kitchen porter or manager. Every job is hired on different things: a dishwasher is not hired on commercial instinct, a bartender is hired on honesty. The order of the competencies changes with it.
- 2
Say how many minutes you have
Honestly, not hopefully. Five go on the welcome and their own questions, and a behavioural question with a follow-up costs four to five. Twenty minutes is three competencies, not eight.
- 3
Run the interview and score as you go
Same questions, same order, same scale for every candidate — otherwise you cannot lay them side by side afterwards, which is the only thing a structured interview buys you. Score during the conversation, not in the evening.
- 4
Take the rest to the trial shift
What the interview could not reach, and everything you gave a 1 or a 2, sits at the bottom of the sheet with what to watch for. That is what makes a trial shift a test rather than a free evening of labour.
What makes an interview structured
Not the questions. Four agreements separate an interview you learn something from and a chat you only remember whether you liked somebody in.
The same questions, every time
Two candidates who were asked different things cannot be compared; you end up comparing your own mood on Tuesday with your mood on Thursday. It is the one point the research is unanimous on.
Ask what happened, not what they would do
"What would you do if a guest complained" measures how well somebody guesses what you want to hear. "Tell me about the last time a guest complained" measures what actually happened — and the follow-up does the work.
Score against anchors, not a feeling
Four points with a description under each. A 3 is not "good", it is "a concrete example with a concrete ending". Without an anchor everybody scores the likeable candidate a point higher.
Write it down before you talk about it
Discuss first and score after, and you score the opinion of the loudest person in the room. Everybody who sat in fills in their own sheet; then you lay them side by side.
What you may not ask — and what to ask instead
An EU interview may not select on age, family situation or pregnancy, origin, religion, disability or health. In hospitality that rarely happens on purpose and almost always by accident. Every question below has a version that tells you the same thing and is allowed.
| Do not ask | Ask instead |
|---|---|
| How old are you? | Do you meet the age requirement to serve alcohol here? |
| Do you have children? Can you do weekends then? | Can you work the shift pattern in the advert? |
| Where are you originally from? | Which languages can you serve a guest in? |
| What is your religion? | Are you available on the days and public holidays in the advert? |
| Do you have health problems? Anything with your back? | This job involves lifting crates of about 15 kg. Can you do that, with adjustments if you need them? |
| What do you earn now? | This is the pay band for this job. Does that work for you? |
The ten competencies, and what they mean here
Narrow and job-shaped rather than the broad personality factors: a restaurant hires somebody for one specific job, and for that, narrow competencies predict better than a general score.
- Reliability
- Turns up, on time, including the Saturday after a bad week — and calls themselves when they genuinely cannot. The most underrated trait in hospitality and the reason most people leave.
- Pace under pressure
- Keeps working and deciding when twenty tickets hang at once, instead of moving faster without finishing anything.
- Guest instinct
- Notices what is wrong at a table before anything is said, and says the right thing when it is said anyway.
- Teamwork
- Sees work that is not theirs and picks it up, and lets colleagues know what they are on.
- Hygiene
- Does the things nobody checks: hands, dates, the fridge, the cloth they wipe with.
- Honesty
- Handles the till, the stock and the tips as though somebody were watching, including when nobody is. In a business of cash and open stock, the biggest blind spot you can have.
- Craft
- Can do the job the vacancy described, and knows where their own limit sits.
- Coachability
- Takes a correction without defending themselves, and does it differently the second time.
- Taking charge
- Makes a decision when one has to be made, and stands by it until service is over.
- Commercial instinct
- Sees that a recommendation is money: offers something unprompted, and knows what they are offering.
Frequently asked questions
Is this tool free?
Yes, completely free, no account and nothing to install. You fill the sheet in and print straight from your browser; nothing you type leaves your device.
Why don't I just get all the questions?
Because you cannot ask them all. A behavioural question with a follow-up costs four to five minutes, so a twenty-minute interview gets through three. A list of twenty questions lies about what fits in your quarter of an hour — and the result is that you start rushing halfway and the last question stays shallow.
Why does one score of 1 stop a candidate?
Because an average is precisely the instrument that buries a single fatal weakness. Somebody who talks well, works fast and scores well on six things but gets a 1 on reliability still comes out fine on an average — and is not standing at the pass three weeks later. Every job carries one to three competencies where a 1 stops the hire, whatever the total says.
May I ask about a criminal record, health or family situation?
That differs per country and per role, and this sheet does not settle it. What does hold everywhere: you may not select on age, family situation or pregnancy, origin, religion, disability or health. The table above puts the lawful version next to each of those questions.
Does this replace a trial shift?
No, and it is built around one. What the interview cannot reach — and everything you scored a 1 or 2 — sits at the bottom of the sheet as the list you watch on the trial shift. The interview decides what the trial shift is about; without that, a trial shift is an evening of shadowing after which nobody wrote anything down.
This is a house document, not employment law. What you may ask in an interview, what you must record and how long you may keep an application differ per country and per collective agreement — put those in your own procedures and contracts, not on this sheet.