Phone interviews can be a real asset for prospective employers. If done correctly, conducting an initial phone interview can save you a lot of time and weed out candidates who might not be a great fit for the position you are hiring for. To help things go smoothly, we are listing 3 phone interview tips below.
Your time is valuable and if you’re going to take the time to do phone interviews, you’ll want to make sure they run as efficiently as possible. We can help you ensure you don’t waste your time conducting your phone interviews. Just follow these simple phone interview tips for conducting a phone interview and everything will run smoothly.
1. Be Prepared
The first tip for conducting an effective phone interview is to be prepared. You’re conducting this phone interview to save yourself some time, remember? So, make sure you’re as prepared as you can be.
Make sure you have the candidate’s resume, cover letter and portfolio on hand. You’ll want to reference these materials throughout your interview. Having all this information ready, you’ll save time and avoid the awkward pause while searching for those documents. It might also be helpful to highlight experiences on their resume you want to discuss with your candidate.
The next step in being prepared for your phone interview is to have a list of questions for the candidate ready. We’re not saying, you can’t ad-lib a little if during your interview a new question you hadn’t thought of before pops in your head; of course go ahead and ask! But you don’t want to spend the interview attempting to come up with questions off the top of your head or trying to remember everything you wanted to ask. So you need to a list of questions sitting in front of you.
2. Ask your Questions in Order
Okay, you’re prepared and you’ve started your phone interview. Our next phone interview tip to ensure things run smoothly, is to ask your questions in order. This tip is easy enough to follow. Start from the top of your list and work your way down. If you skip around there is a good chance you will lose your spot and have to waste time going back and trying to figure out what questions you’ve missed. By asking your questions in order you can ensure that you ask each question and get all the information needed to make an informed decision.
3. Take Notes
Our final phone interview tip for you is to ask you to take notes. Whether you’re only interviewing one candidate or a hundred, you’ll want to take notes. No matter how great your memory is you won’t remember everything from your phone interview, or worse, you could remember some of the candidates answers incorrectly. That can lead you to making an ill-informed decision or causing you to make a follow up call, which defeats the purpose of a time saving phone interview. So, do yourself a favour and take a few notes!
By following these simple tips for conducting a phone interviews you will ensure that your interviews will be a success. We wish you luck on your search for the right candidate(s) for your company.