Do you have a telephone interview coming up? If you are unsure about how to prepare, then read these 5 simple and easy tips for acing your “virtual meeting!”
Tip One: Focus on Them
It’s wise to study the company’s website and latest press releases, as well as the job description, prior to your phone interview.
Tip Two: Job Description Technique
If you have a written job description, a GREAT inside tip for using it to your ultimate advantage during your phone interview is to highlight all the key words and phrases in it that match your background of experience. Include transferable skills in this as well. Then weave these exact words and phrases into your conversation. Simple solution; profound results.
Tip Three: Show Your Positive Enthusiasm
Isn’t it true that we all like happy people? And what’s more, you will make a great impression on your interviewer if you share with him or her how excited you are about the position, about their company, or a combination of both! They want to hire people who want to work with them!
Ask questions (at the appropriate times of course) that show your intellect and your enthusiasm for the position. Examples include questions about future projects, biggest challenges and if you were hired, what the first things you could do to make a positive impact in the position would be.
Tip Five: Awareness of Your Environment
You want to conduct your end of the interview in a peaceful, quiet place you feel good in, free of disturbances like barking dogs, call waiting, planes, trains, autos and other people. This will help you focus and heighten your calm and confidence!
Bonus Tip: Politeness
Your clear, deliberate words, not talking over your interviewer, your display of appropriate respect (please, thank you, etc.), and your awareness of a balanced dialogic conversation, will serve you well. In addition, if you stand up and smile, you will increase your overall energy – which will be “heard” by your interviewer(s)!
Good tips, especially the job description technique, although, just as we need to stress accomplishments over job descriptions on a resume, the Situation-Action-Results scheme needs to come across in describing past exploits. Probably the biggest challenge in a phone interview is handling open ended questions such as “Describe some projects you did and the tools you used”. Even a fairly succinct answer is likely to sound like a monolog without interplay. (I once heard a hiring manager playing with a coin on the desk while I held forth.) And you may need to gently steer the interlocutor to the project that best illustrates your relevant skills, not a random one he/she points to that may showcase something else less relevant to the job. There needs to be a payoff above and beyond what you deliver in person where you have body language and eye contact to help you along.
Future subject suggestion: handling video and powerpoint interview formats.