Telephone Interviews

Telephone interviews have become a popular method for screening applicants. Use these strategies to excel in a telephonic interview.
Telephone interviews are becoming an important part of the recruitment process. They are now used frequently by many organisations, as the first stage in selecting a candidate. Telephone interviews save time and cost relatively less. Employers conduct telephone interviews for a variety of reasons. They may have received hundreds of responses to a vacancy advertisement and do not want to go through a face-to-face interview with each applicant. A number of applicants may be residing in other cities, and the organisation wants to save on the time and cost involved in arranging in-depth interviews across the table for these applicants.
Employers, therefore, use the telephone interview as an initial screening interview. It is a short, cost-effective way of finding out the answers to the following questions about the applicant:

• Is the applicant serious about the job and the organisation ?
• Has he/she made any effort to research the company/position or has just sent in his/her resume?
• How good are his/her communication skills?
• Why does he/she want to quit from his/her existing job?

Telephone Interviews Can Be Scheduled Or Unscheduled
There is no fixed system for when a telephone interview is held, unlike a face-to-face interview where the time, date and venue are scheduled well in advance. Some employers could inform you beforehand when they are likely to call. Others may just decide to pick up the phone and call you in the evening when they expect that you would be back from work. You also cannot be sure who is making the first call, whether the HR person or the recruiting agency. In this scenario, it makes sense to be prepared because you never know when you will receive the telephone call. In case you receive the call, without prior notice, at a bad time, when you are in the middle of some domestic chore, you could take down the person’s name and telephone number and say you would call back after 5 minutes. Or, you could request the caller to hold on for a few seconds till you get your act together in terms of getting a paper/pencil and your documents ready. Otherwise, you may not be psychologically prepared and could be caught on the wrong foot from the word go.
In this article, we will provide guidelines on how you can prepare for a telephone interview – to improve your performance and increase your chances of being short-listed.