Hi, I’m Jeri Walker, Career & Job Search Strategist and Founder of Your Best Designed Career
and in this video I'm going to talk about phone interviews and how you can ensure
that you move through to the next step in the hiring process.
Okay let's talk about phone interviews.
Phone interviews are a way for the company to either eliminate candidates from their
hiring pool or to determine that some candidates are going to be worthy of moving forward and
possibly bringing in for an in-person interview.
It's important that you treat a phone interview just as you would an in-person interview.
Now the beauty of phone interviews is, assuming it's not some type of video interview is that
you can have all kinds of notes and cheat sheets and tools in front of you so you've
got something to reference.
Let's talk about what you need to do before, during, and after, phone interviews.
The first thing you need to do is make sure you have good contact information.
You want to get the name of the person you're talking to obviously but you also want to
make sure you’ve got their phone number and their email address.
The phone number, in case for whatever reason the call gets disconnected you want to be
able to reach them and the email address you’ll want to have because you’re going to end
up sending them a thank-you note so that will save you from having to ask for that in the
heat of the moment when you may not even remember to do it.
And while you're getting that contact information find out how long they think the interview
is going to go, because the last thing you want is to have anticipated that it's only
going to go 10 or 15 minutes and they’ve blocked out an hour for it.
So, get that information as well.
Next you need to perfect your elevator speech.
Now you should always have an elevator speech so that if you’re at a networking event
or even a social event you’ve got a response to “What do you do?”
But given that that's probably going to be the first question that you're asked you know
the tell me about yourself question you need to make sure that you have an elevator speech
that brings out the skills that are relevant to the position that you are interviewing
for.
Next you want to do your research.
Research the company, the person you’re interviewing with, and of course the position.
You can use LinkedIn to research the company as well as the person that you're going to
have an interview with.
You can use the company website to learn more about the company but you really want to take
some time and study the job posting.
What you can do is you can print out a copy of the job posting you also want to print
out a copy of your resume and what you want to do is highlight all of the areas on the
job posting that coincide with your resume because those are going to be the points that
you are going to want to cross reference to make yourself the ideal candidate.
Once your research is done, you’re going to make sure you have all of your resources
collected and that’s going to be a copy of the resume and the job posting that we
just talked about.
As well you want to get a short list of questions to ask because you're always going to be asked
if you have questions and you want to make sure you have some ready.
I also recommend that you have a list a short just bullet points of the various points in
your elevator speech that way you won't forget it.
You don't want to type it out and read something but bullet points are going to help you kind
of stay on course.
And then obviously you want to take a pen and paper so you can take some notes.
Next you need to determine where you're going to go to have this interview.
Ideally if you can do it from home where it's quiet and you can possibly have your laptop
in front of you to reference the company website if possible is good but this usually isn't
possible because phone interviews generally happen in the middle of your work day so it's
not really possible to be home.
So if this is the case find a quiet place and make sure you have good cell phone coverage
there and be sure your cell phone is charged.
Next, you want to prepare yourself to answer some of the more common job interview questions.
Chances are, the first one that they're going to ask you is tell me about yourself so if
you're prepared and you're solid on your elevator speech you're going to be fine on this one.
They'll probably ask you what your salary expectations are, they will probably ask you
tell me about the company and this one is one that they use to determine how interested
you are in this position because if you can't answer this question, from their perspective
how interested are you in working there so make sure you can answer this one as well.
Now let's talk about what you need to do during the interview.
First of all, when you pick up the phone state your name, don't just say hello.
Say hello, this is whomever.
It just adds that level of professionalism to the phone call and it kind of starts you
off on the right foot.
Next you need to watch your tone.
One of the disadvantages of a phone interview unless it’s a Skype or some of other type
of video interview you're not face-to-face with the other person so you don't want to
sound bored or disinterested, you want to sound confident and excited about the position.
Pay attention to your inflection.
One thing you can do to help with this is to smile while you talk.
If you smile while you talk it just changes your voice it's a combination your soft palate
is positioned a little bit differently there’s also a psychological advantage smiling you
just feel better you sound more confident you feel more confident so try that.
Next give meaningful answers and don't ramble.
If a recruiter is conducting this phone interview, they’re not going to have all of the insights
and necessarily know all the technical aspects of the position that you're talking about
so don't get in the weeds on things, don't go off on a tangent.
Be sure that as you're answering the questions you're using your copy of your job posting
your copy of your resume and again you’re bridging your answer, you’re bridging your
skills to that position.
Keep it relevant don't ramble and pay attention if the recruiter is interrupting you then
chances are you were talking a little bit too long so make sure your mindful about that.
Next go hands-free if you can.
This frees up your hands for taking notes, for grabbing any materials that you have that
you're using as well if you tend to gesture a lot when you talk it doesn't confine you
and sometimes it helps you to get more confidence and relax just if you can kind of talk like
you normally do.
Also hands-free does not mean speakerphone don't do this.
And finally make sure you ask questions throughout the interview.
You should have already prepared your list some ideas that you might ask what are the
challenges that company or this position in particular are facing.
You can also ask the recruiter directly what do you like about the company it kind of gives
you the opportunity to build a little bit of rapport with them.
And then of course right before you end the phone call you always want to ask what are
the next steps in the hiring process?
After the interview the first thing you want to do is assess yourself ask yourself three
questions and that is, what did I do well, what did I struggle with, and what can I do
to perform better at the next interview.
You want to always get better at these interviews so if you made a mistake just learn from it
and that way you can prepare and do better next time.
Next you want to send a thank you.
You've got that email address so send the interviewer a thank you and do that within
a few hours of the interview and tell them thank you for their time, express your interest
in the position and use this as an opportunity to once again draw them back into the interview
and bridge your skills and why you would be of value to the company if you are hired for
this position.
And the final thing you need to do after you send the thank you email is within four to
five days just follow up again, touch base where they are in the hiring process and if
you don't hear back from them don't waste your time analyzing the reasons why you didn't
hear from them just move on and work your other leads.
Now you know how to prepare yourself for your next phone interview but do you know how to
answer some of the most common interview questions?
If you need help with that get my free guide I’m going to put a link for that right below.
If you found this video helpful, please like it, and share it with somebody that you know
who might have a phone interview coming up.
And for more career and job search advice, subscribe to my channel and be sure to hit
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I post videos every Tuesday.
Thanks for watching, I’ll see you next time.