Directing a Phone Interview   by Nathan Hall

in Business / Human Resources    (submitted 2011-05-25)

Nowadays companies are focusing more and more on the end result of the recruiting operation so more new recruitment methods become popular, one of them is phone interviewing.. Directing a telephone interview saves time and money since most common phone interview questions can be answered in less then 15 minutes. In this article we’re going to talk about ways of conducting a phone interview whether you represent a company or job applicant.

Let’s suppose you’re the employer and you need a specific applicant for the job. The first thing you should do after creating a list of applicants to call is to write down the phone interview questions. You must have a set of questions for the candidate and the curriculum vitae of every one of them next to you when you make the call. Try to get the most amount of data about your applicant just by hearing his voice; do you think he's the best applicant for the job?

You're going to be more selective because you can't see their faces nor their body language. Take notes on anything you view as relevant. Provide your candidate plenty time to ask what he wants to know.It’s a phone interview so don’t take it too lightly, that will cause you to become distracted, making annoying gaps in the conversation. That’s totally unprofessional. Try to communicate a clear image about the position requirements and lead the conversation the whole time.

If you’re the candidate you should know there’s an extremely selective operator talking to you who will be conducting the conversation at all times and the best you can do is prepare as much as you can before the interview. You have the advantage of choosing the interview's day and hour so choose a moment when you're comfortable.

Checking the employer's history has always been a good idea. Write a list of common phone interview questions and answer and read it a couple of times. You should have multiple answers for some of the questions, for example: “Give us three top reasons why you want to work with us?”. If something goes bad don’t panic. Supposably they require 5 reasons instead of three and you haven't prepared for that, don't panic. Just say to them honestly if you can’t answer a particular question. Last, when you talk on the telephone stand up and smile, that makes your voice more nice. Remember, you have a lot of advantages when you’re not face to face. You can walk while talking and you don’t have to control your body language so much and you can read the phone interview questions from your script if your mind goes blank.

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Common phone interview questions and answers