If you're looking for a job right now, chances are you'll get through the whole interview
process without meeting a single person, but even without the current situation, companies
are relying more and more on phone interviews to kickstart their hiring. The problem is
according to [ziti.com 00:00:14] once you get the phone interview, you only have one
chance out of six to pass to the next round and land the job. That's why in this video
we'll go over nine phone interview tips you need to do before your phone interview and
during the phone interview to increase your chance of passing to the next round. But to
prepare phone interviews the right way, you first have to understand why they exist in
the first place.
Companies don't have the resources nor the time to interview 20 candidates and bring
them all to the office. Therefore, they will prefer to call these candidates, screen them,
then bring three to four people for a face to face interview. That's why many people
call it a phone screening interview because their main goal is to provide the recruiter
with specific information about you to see if you really match the job posting like your
application was saying. It is also the right time to know all those requirements that people
tend to forget. For example, working night shifts, relocation or longterm career goals.
But most candidates don't understand that goal and take these phone interviews very
lightly saying it's just a 15 minute phone call. It'll be easy. Wrong. Remember, it's
a phone screening interview, meaning that you have high chances of being cut right in
this round and that's why you have to double down in preparation and avoid silly mistakes
starting with number one, having a bad voicemail. Before you do anything, set up your voicemail,
please. Life can happen and maybe you'll miss your phone interview because of X reason and
the recruiter has to find a professional voicemail installed to keep a great impression of you.
So don't use the custom voicemail like this one.
723-8497 is not available. At the tone, please record your message.
Also remove your voicemail from high school please.
Hello?
Hey, what's up man?
Got you. I can't answer now. Leave a message and I'll get back to you if I feel like it.
Yeah, recruiters don't really like that and your friends too, by the way. Use something
simple, just like this one.
You've reached Mahdi Kafi, I'm unable to take your call right now. Please leave your name
and phone number and the reason for your call and I'll call you back as soon as I can. Thanks
and have a good day.
Cool. You've placed your safety net just before your phone interview. Now, make sure you prepare
well using the RPPQ method. Research, prepare popular questions. That's the most important
step in the whole process because remember, the goal of the phone screen interview is
to make sure that you fit with the job role and that's why you need to study the job posting.
You need to study the company's mission, their longterm goals and their culture.
Also, remember to prepare popular questions that they might ask you. For that, read the
job posting several times and note any questions you might about the job. Next, go on the company's
website and read about their mission, their goals and or culture, and finally check out
the interview section of Glassdoor for sample questions this specific company might ask
you. And if you don't find anything relevant on Glassdoor, then prepared those questions.
Tell me about yourself. Why do you want to work here? Tell me about a time you failed?
What is your greatest weakness? And why are you leaving your current job? I leave videos
into YouTube cars and in the description if you want to dive deeper into those.
Great. What are you going to do now that you know all of this information? Are you going
to remember everything? I doubt it, and that's why you need to keep notes near you with step
number three, reminder notes. If you're scared of forgetting anything from a question that
you really want to ask or how to answer, what is your greatest weakness? Then remember that
you can keep some notes in front of you while doing the phone interview. Now don't prepare
a wall of notes like if you had to break out your brother from prison because you won't
have the time to read them all anyway.
Prepare three to four post its with your most important reminders and put them near the
place where you'll take the interview. And talking about the place, don't do the interview
in any place. Location. I think it's common sense to not choose somewhere in your house
with a lot of noise or a lot of distractions, but I want to take it a step further by talking
about the psychology behind the different rooms in your house. For example, your brain
knows your bedroom is made to sleep and relax and that's why I don't recommend taking the
interview there. That's why I prefer to take the interview somewhere neutral or where I
usually work or study. Please don't take it on your bed. This way, you will already be
accustomed to the vibe of the room and that will help you perform better in the phone
interview.
All right, your preparation is done. Just double check about the time and yeah, I was
about to say location, but it's in your house. Just double check the date and time and get
ready. And talking about being ready, learn to wait for the interview. The art of waiting.
All right. I don't know about you but I used to try to kill time when waiting for my interview.
I checked the clock and see if I have 10 minutes left, I'll go grab a snack or watch a YouTube
video or scroll on Instagram. Don't do that for two main reasons. First, you increase
your chance of missing the call if you focus on something else before the phone interview.
Second, your mind will be focused on a current task and won't be able to focus on the phone
interview for several minutes after starting the phone interview. Cal newport argues in
his book Deep Work that your mind tends to still think about your previous task for several
minutes, even when you started a new one and you don't want that to happen to you.
You have to be 100% focused on your phone interview, so five to 10 minutes before the
interview, stay still, read your notes again and maybe practice one or two questions that
you think is still difficult for you. Hey, I know what you could do to kill time. Check
the audio on your phone, increase the volume enough in your phone so that you don't repeat.
Can you repeat the question too many times in the phone interview. Remember that a phone
interview is very quick. It's 15 to 30 minutes. We don't have a lot of time, so you don't
want to waste extra time just because you haven't set the volume to a proper level just
before that.
But how about how the other person is hearing you? Please do not put your phone on speaker
and do not use your headphones to listen to the interviewer because once it'll be your
turn, they'll hear you like this and they will most likely focus on the poor audio and
not about your awesome answer.
All right, so you adjusted your audio. Now the phone rings. You can pick up the phone
but don't stay sitted, stand up. Your body language is super important even on the phone.
The way you stand, the way you move, and even your smile can be sensed over the phone. And
that's what American psychologist and Harvard professor Amy Cuddy refers to as power posting.
Your posting can give a lot of valuable information about you and that's why you need to stand.
By standing up, you'll have more room for your gesture, your voice will be clearer and
you'll have more chance of speaking as you would speak in a face to face interview. But
don't go overboard with your charismatic gestures. Take your time and give time to the interviewer
to take notes, with step number eight, pace yourself.
You're not in front of an interviewer so you don't see if they're done taking notes. So
make sure you take some short pauses between your answers. And if you're not sure, just
ask them if they're done taking notes and if they need more details about their question,
they will love that. And let me tell you something, not a lot of candidates actually do that.
So they'll appreciate it a lot.
All right. You've done everything perfectly so far, so don't kill your chance with this
last mistake. Number nine, multitasking. I know that by standing up and by being at home,
you'll be primed to do something else during your phone interview. You can easily go and
see what's in the fridge, pet your cat, or just walk all around your house. Well, don't.
Just stay in one place because remember, if you focus on something else, your mind will
be split in two and the other person, the interviewer, will notice it because your voice
tone will change, the way you behave, and also the quality of your answers will be affected
too. To help you out, just stay in one room, make sure there's nothing distracting and
walk around it as Dumbledore does in Harry Potter Three.
Is that really Dumbledore.
In his study.
Pacing.
He does that a lot.
You're now done with your phone interview, so what's next? If you really want to stand
out, you have to send a thank you email just to reiterate how much you're excited about
the opportunity and to remind the interviewer about your skills and how you fit the role.
Because remember, they will likely call 20 to 30 candidates, so you want them to remember
you and an easy way to do that and it takes only five minutes, is just to send a thank
you email.
If you want to learn how to craft the perfect thank you emailed, it will take you just five
minutes and that will give you results, then watch this video next. If you got any value
from this video, then subscribe to Primal Career. Just hit the red button just below
this video and tell me in the comments section below, what's the most important step to succeed
in your opinion, among the ones that I just mentioned. Is it setting up your voicemail?
Is it the preparation, or is it standing up? Tell me in the comment section below, I'll
talk to you next week. Stay safe and ciao.