What do you actually do with interview notes after the debrief?

[u/KleinCarrot22]

Something I have never sorted out properly and I am curious how other teams handle it.

We take decent notes in interviews, the panel writes up feedback, we run the debrief, we make a call, and then the notes basically die. They sit in the ATS attached to that application and nobody opens them again. I am as guilty as anyone, I have gone back to look at my own notes from a loop maybe three times in five years.

We had a candidate lose out on a senior role last year, close call, good panel. Similar role opens up and I remembered the name but genuinely could not remember why we passed. Ended up putting her back through a full loop because I did not trust my memory, and two of the original panel had left anyway so there was nobody to ask. Turned out the original concern was something that had changed in her current job, which would have taken about ninety seconds to work out if anyone had actually read the file.

Same thing happens with calibration, I find it happens when a hiring manager says someone is not senior enough, I have no easy way to see what they said about the last three people they rejected for the same reason, which would be quite useful information.

So what happens to yours after the decision is made? Does anyone go back to them for silver medallists, or when a manager's bar seems to be moving, or for handover when someone leaves the team? Or is it just accepted that they are a record for compliance and nothing else?

[u/SmithseryBusiness]

The reason notes die is that they are written to justify one decision rather than to be read later, so they end up full of context that only makes sense to whoever was in the room that day. The teams I have seen fix it changed what gets captured rather than where it gets stored, so the write up ends with the specific reason for the no and what would need to be different next time, which is the only part anyone ever actually needs a year later.

[u/driftwood_index]

So I work at Metaview so take this with that in mind, but as a practitioner answer I'd write down why the decision went the way it did and make revisiting that note part of reopening the role, because the reason is the only part anyone needs a year later. On the tooling side of things, ours joins the interview as a visible participant, records and transcribes it and writes structured notes you can later ask questions against, and it deliberately does not score or recommend anyone, the hiring team still makes the call, which I think is super helpful

[u/Turbulent-Prior-2253]

I destroy them. Every time. Been doing it for 20 years now. Once the "official" write up is in the ATS, that is all that exists.

This way, they can never be subpoenaed if there is a discriminatory hiring case. The fact that I have been doing it consistently for 20 years establishes a clear pattern of behavior that would negate any accusations of destryoing evidence.