Interview Note-Taking: Template, CNIL Rules and AI

Good interview note-taking means writing down job-related facts: the question you asked, the concrete example the candidate gave, their exact words when they matter, and one score per criterion with a one-line reason. Never a vague impression, and nothing that touches a ground of discrimination. Write as if the candidate will read it back: they can ask to.

Half of good note-taking happens before the candidate walks in. Without a frame, every interviewer writes down whatever struck them, and two write-ups of the same interview stop being comparable. With a shared frame, you record the same things for every candidate: the comparison gets fairer and the decision gets easier to explain.

1. Pick 3 to 5 criteria from the job description (project management, client relationships, a specific tool). Article L1221-6 of the French Labour Code limits what you may ask a candidate to information that assesses their ability to do the job or their professional skills, with a direct and necessary link to the role.
2. Write one or two questions per criterion and ask every candidate the same ones, in the same order.
3. Set a 1 to 5 scale with one sentence per level: 1 = no example, 3 = one concrete but partial example, 5 = several detailed examples with a measurable result.
4. Add a "not assessed" box for every criterion: an honest blank beats a guessed score.
5. If you plan to record the interview or use an AI tool, tell the candidate beforehand, in writing (see below).

Write what happened, not what you concluded. The STAR method makes it fast: for each example, the Situation, the Task the candidate owned, the Action they personally took and the Result. When a sentence matters, write it in quotation marks in the candidate's own words, rather than a paraphrase that is already drifting toward your opinion.

Two families of notes cause trouble. The first is impressions with no fact behind them: "bad vibe", "lacks energy", "not the team's profile". They read like reasons but prove nothing, and they are exactly what weakens a decision when someone challenges it. Replace each one with the behavior that triggered it, or delete it.

The second is more serious: anything touching a ground of discrimination. Article L1132-1 of the French Labour Code forbids excluding someone from a recruitment process on these grounds, and most countries have an equivalent list. A note that mentions them leaves a written trace that they may have counted. Do not write them, do not infer them, do not let them weigh on a score:

• origin, real or assumed membership of an ethnic group, nation or so-called race, surname, place of residence;
• age, sex, gender identity, sexual orientation;
• family situation, pregnancy;
• health, disability, loss of autonomy, genetic characteristics;
• physical appearance;
• political opinions, religious beliefs, trade union or mutual society activity, an elected office;
• the ability to speak a language other than French, bank domiciliation, economic vulnerability, whistleblower status.

The CNIL also lists questions that are off limits in an interview: information about family members, whether they want children, social security number or bank details (except special cases such as temp agencies), or place of residence, except for roles with on-call duty. If you could not ask for a piece of information, it has no place in your notes.

Here is the frame we recommend. It fits on one page, gets filled in during the interview and in the ten minutes after, and forces every score to rest on a fact.

A filled-in example for a project manager role:

In a user interview, a qualitative study or field research, you are not assessing the person: you are trying to understand what they do and why. The discipline is the same, keeping what was said apart from what you conclude, but the frame changes.

• Exact sentences in quotation marks, with the point in the conversation where they were said.
• What the person does today, kept apart from what they say they would do: the second is far less reliable.
• Concrete workarounds and pain points ("every Monday I export everything to Excel to...").
• Your hypotheses in a separate column, never mixed with the facts.
• A participant code (P1, P2) instead of a name in shared notes.

Under the GDPR the logic is the same: tell the participant what the interview is for, whether it is recorded, who will have access and how long you keep it, and note their agreement to the recording in the header. For what comes next, our guide to synthesizing user interviews shows how to get from ten interviews to conclusions without keeping only the lines that suit you.

Writing and listening at the same time means losing a bit of both. Recording the interview lets you watch the candidate, ask the follow-up at the right moment, then write the notes from what was actually said. The trouble with the usual tools is the bot: a "Notetaker" participant that joins the video call and shows up in front of the candidate, and that is useless in person, because there is no call to join.

Reline records on your side: the app captures your microphone and your computer's audio on macOS, Windows and Linux (beta), or from the browser. No bot joins the call, and an interview in a room records the same way, through the computer's microphone. Transcription covers 60+ languages, including French, detected automatically; on a video call it separates your microphone from the call audio (Me and Other). To check a sentence, you press play on that transcript line and hear the exact moment again.

The honest caveat: only the capture is local. Transcription, AI summaries and storage run in Reline's cloud under a data processing agreement (DPA), and your meetings are never used to train third-party models. Reline does not promise hosting in France.

• Tell them before, not during. The CNIL counts filming or recording a job interview without telling the candidate beforehand as unfair collection. Article L1221-9 of the French Labour Code forbids collecting information about a candidate through a device they were not told about in advance, and article L1221-8 requires telling them which recruitment methods are used.
• Justify the need. For video and in-person interviews alike, the CNIL guide says keeping the audio or video does not appear necessary without a specific justification, and that, barring a particular justification, it need not be kept beyond the hiring decision.
• Minimize. The recruiter stays responsible for the tool they choose: check that the vendor does not process candidate data for purposes other than recruitment.
• No emotion analysis. Since 2 February 2025, the AI Act bans AI systems that infer a person's emotions in the workplace (article 5), and the European Commission's non-binding guidelines apply this to recruitment too. Reline transcribes and summarizes what was said; it does not analyze emotions from the voice.
• Keep the decision human. The AI Act classes AI systems intended for recruiting or selecting people as high-risk (annex III). Whether a tool that transcribes and summarizes an interview falls into that category depends on how it is used and is a case-by-case question. Treat the AI's output as a draft you read, correct and own, never as a verdict.

1. In the invitation, announce AI-assisted note-taking: purpose (interview write-up), who will have access, how long it is kept, and that they can say no.
2. At the start of the interview, ask again out loud. If they decline, take notes by hand with the same frame, without it weighing on the assessment.
3. Start the recording in Reline on your computer. No bot joins the call.
4. During the interview, write only your scores and follow-up questions: the audio keeps the rest.
5. After the interview, run the Candidate Scorecard Lens, or write your own Lens with your criteria. It only scores what was discussed and marks the rest "N/A". The built-in Lens includes a culture-fit dimension: remove it if you cannot ground it in facts. Read, correct, and delete anything outside the criteria.
6. Share the note with the panel only. In Reline, notes are private by default: a workspace role grants nothing on its own, and every reader gets an explicit, revocable grant.
7. When your policy's deadline arrives (for the audio, at the latest at the decision unless justified), copy the written notes into the candidate's file and delete the Reline note that holds the recording, then delete it from the trash too: the recording is erased with the note (it cannot be deleted on its own), and a note left in the trash is only purged after 30 days.

For an unsuccessful candidate, the CNIL guide describes three periods: up to three months after the recruitment ends, so you can explain the rejection; up to two years after the last contact if they go into a talent pool, with their consent or clear information and an easy way to object; and intermediate archiving for evidence, up to five years after the decision. For the audio recording itself, the benchmark is shorter: the hiring decision, unless justified. Write your rule down, apply it to everyone, and delete on the planned date.

Access matters as much as duration. A candidate's write-up does not need to be readable by the whole company, only by the people involved in the decision. That is Reline's default: no note is visible without an explicitly granted access, and there is no silent backdoor for admins.

Good interview note-taking comes down to four rules: the same frame for everyone, facts instead of impressions, nothing that touches a ground of discrimination, and notes you could show the candidate. AI helps you keep them without giving up on listening, as long as you tell people beforehand, keep the decision human and delete the audio once it has served its purpose.