How to write a candidate recommendation a hiring manager can actually use

A useful candidate recommendation leads with your call and the main reason, then shows the evidence against each requirement, states the gaps and open questions honestly, and ends with the practical details the hiring manager needs to act. It separates what you found from what you think about it, so the reader can disagree with your conclusion without redoing your work.

This applies whether you’re an agency recruiter submitting candidates to a client, an in-house recruiter handing a shortlist to a hiring manager, or an interviewer writing up a candidate for the person who decides.

Why most write-ups don’t help

The typical write-up does one of two things. It retells the resume (“Jordan has seven years of experience across three firms…”), which the hiring manager can read for themselves. Or it adds adjectives (“a strong, polished candidate who would be a great fit”), which tell the reader how you feel but not why.

Neither helps someone decide. What helps is the thing the hiring manager can’t easily get alone: your reading of the evidence against what the job needs, and what you still don’t know.

The structure

RECOMMENDATION (1–2 sentences)
  Interview / Don't interview / Interview if [condition].
  The single most important reason.

EVIDENCE AGAINST EACH REQUIREMENT
  Must-haves first, then nice-to-haves.
  For each: Met / Not met / Unclear, and the evidence in one line.
  Say where the evidence came from: resume, call, work sample, reference.

GAPS AND OPEN QUESTIONS
  What's missing or unconfirmed, and how you'd find out.

RISKS
  Anything that might make this hire not work, stated as a fact
  with its source, not as a feeling.

PRACTICALITIES
  Pay expectations, notice period, start date, location or remote,
  interest level, other processes they're in (if they've told you).

Three rules make the structure work:

1. Facts, judgement and recommendation are kept apart. “Ran the close for three entities (resume; confirmed on call)” is a fact with a source. “Strong on the close” is your judgement. “Interview” is your recommendation. When these blur together, the reader can’t tell which part to check.
2. The same requirements for every candidate. If you write up three people against three different sets of strengths, the hiring manager can’t compare them. Use the job’s requirements as the rows every time; our guide to comparing candidates side by side explains why.
3. Your words mean the same thing each time. If “strong” means “clear, specific evidence of having done it”, say so once and stick to it. It’s the same principle the U.S. Office of Personnel Management applies to structured interviews: “All responses are evaluated using the same rating scale and standards for acceptable answers.”

A worked example

Here is a recommendation for a fictional applicant, called Applicant J here, for the fictional Senior Accountant role at Larkspur Partners used throughout our guides. Everything in it is invented.

Recommendation: interview. Applicant J is the clearest match on the month-end close among this week’s applicants; the main open question is audit experience.

Must-haves

• CPA designation: Met. Designation listed; confirmed on the phone screen.
• Has run a month-end close independently: Met. Ran the close for a three-entity distributor for three years and cut it from nine working days to five (resume; walked me through the process on the call).

Nice-to-haves

• Audit working papers: Unclear. Resume mentions “audit support”. On the call J described pulling documents for auditors but not preparing schedules. Worth a direct interview question.
• Cloud ledger: Met. Led the move from a desktop package to a cloud ledger (resume).
• Public accounting: Not met. Industry experience only.

Risks. Current role includes a team of two; this role has one junior report. J said that suits them; worth confirming they’re not expecting to manage more.

Practicalities. Expects pay within the posted range. Four weeks’ notice. Prefers hybrid; fine with two office days. In one other process, at an early stage.

Notice what the example doesn’t say: “great culture fit”, “very personable”, “polished”. If J’s communication matters for the role, and it does, it belongs as evidence against a requirement (“explained the close clearly to a non-accountant on the call”), not as an impression.

What to leave out

• Anything about protected characteristics, such as age, family plans, health, religion, ethnicity or national origin, even when the candidate mentioned it. It shouldn’t influence the decision, and putting it in writing invites the suspicion that it did.
• Guesses about personal life: “probably won’t relocate with kids at that age”, “might be overqualified and get bored”. If a real constraint matters, ask the candidate and record their answer.
• Opinions from people who aren’t part of the process, including unrequested back-channel references.
• Comparisons to the hiring manager or the team (“reminds me of Sam”). Similarity is not evidence; our article on culture fit explains why.

If you’re a recruiter sending a candidate to a client, get the candidate’s agreement first, and send only what the client needs to decide.

Recommending against

Sometimes the honest recommendation is “don’t interview”, or “interview only if the audit requirement is negotiable”. Say so, with the evidence. A recruiter whose “no” is reliable is more useful than one who forwards everyone, and a recommendation with a clearly stated condition lets the hiring manager make the trade-off instead of discovering it in an interview.

Using it for a shortlist

When you’re sending several candidates at once, put a one-line summary for each at the top, using the same requirements, and the full write-ups below. Include the near misses in a line each, with the reason, so the hiring manager can pull one back in if they weigh a requirement differently. Our guide to shortlisting candidates covers how to build the list in the first place.

Where SortTheStack fits

SortTheStack does much of the evidence section for you: every application is read against the job’s requirements, each one marked met, not met or unclear, with the supporting lines quoted. Your team adds comments, and you can share a shortlist with a hiring manager or client by link, so they see the same evidence you did. The recommendation stays yours. See how it works for agencies.

Sources

• U.S. Office of Personnel Management, Structured interviews, accessed 19 October 2026.