Virtual interviews are emerging as THE way of interviewing these days – especially in the aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic, it seems to have been the only way of interviewing candidates, albeit for a limited period of time.
So, we at Smart Careers Today have thought about laying down all the important guidelines to help brush up on everything a candidate might need to know to do well in phone and video interviews. Assuming you will be attending a pre-scheduled phone interview, here are the tips you should pay attention to:
1. Remember to charge your phone battery beforehand (assuming it is a pre-scheduled interview). This is a MUST for everyone who is expecting a call from prospective hiring managers and should be a part of the absolute basic level of preparation.
2. Make sure you and your surroundings are free of all distractions at least 10 minutes prior to your expected call time. For that, you will need to do the following things:
a) Clear your schedule for the stipulated time period,
b) Take care of any pending tasks by finishing them beforehand or by rescheduling them for a later time
c) Find a quiet place where you can be by yourself for an extended period of time
d) Lastly, do have a bottle of water and a box of tissues handy – just in case!
If you are at home and expecting a call from a potential employer, think about the following
- retreating to a room where you can lock the door and talk undisturbed for as long as you need
- make arrangements beforehand to handle any possible disturbances created by children or pets
- if necessary, create a ‘do not ring the doorbell’ sign for your front door – especially if you live in an area where you frequently get unwanted visitors from religious groups or salespeople from businesses you have no intention to interact with
- consider hanging a “do not disturb” sign outside / on the door of the room you will be using for the interview
- avoid common areas such as the kitchen, family room, or living room of the house under all circumstances if you live with family or friends
- clearly communicate with the people in your household about the importance of not talking to you / disturbing you OR not making unnecessary noise for the entire estimated duration of your interview.
If you are at work and are aware about an upcoming phone interview, please follow these guidelines:
- make sure you clear your calendar for the designated time period – if necessary, reschedule or cancel your appointments
- find a quiet area in the office building where there is little to no chance of running into your boss or your coworkers
- try to avoid common areas of your workplace, such as – the lounge, break room, lunchroom, or the washroom – since you can seldom accurately predict who you might run into at those places
- the best place for a quiet and interruption-free conversation could be inside your own car. If there is a chance that your coworkers or boss might see you talking over your phone inside your car and if you feel that this might raise some red flags or unavoidable questions – then drive away to a nearby residential neighbourhood or a local mall/plaza and pull over / park your car there to talk worry-free for an extended period of time.
3. During your telephone interview, the single most important aspect that you can control 100% is how you choose to communicate. You will need to speak clearly maintaining an appropriate level of volume without sounding too loud or too timid. Your tone must be polite and professional at all times – neither over-enthusiastic (to express interest) nor casual or nonchalant (in an attempt to sound too cool). You must enunciate every word legibly in an articulate fashion so that any barrier that has been created due to a difference in accent or the presence of static noise due to poor connection can easily be crossed. However, your enunciation should not be in a manner that makes you sound unnatural or robotic. There are some great voice exercises you can do beforehand that would work like a charm to warm up your voice box and help the muscles around your mouth to move properly. If you are experiencing mild discomfort in your throat before the interview and feel that it might affect your voice or tonal quality, drinking something warm might be really helpful in those situations.
4. Keep a copy of your resume in front of you so that you can check anything that the interviewer can possibly refer to. Although you are aware of the content of your resume, you might not remember every single little detail you have put in there – especially numerical figures or quantifiable achievements that you have listed under each position. It is highly likely that your interviewer would like to talk to you about specifics, and you should not appear unprepared or lost when that happens.
5. Keep a notepad and a pen near you in case you need to jot down something quickly. You may always request your interviewer to email you any important information that is relevant for the next steps, but you never know what exactly will happen – so, the habit of quick note-taking cannot do any harm!
6. Keep a short list of questions you are planning to ask your interviewer. Select the questions carefully so that you appear as someone who is intelligent, thoughtful, resourceful, and doesn’t mind taking initiative. As a general rule of thumb, prepare multiple lists of questions to ask your interviewer(s) for different stages of the interview, appropriate to the specific stage of the hiring process you would be at. Have the list of questions that is appropriate to the stage of hiring you are in, handy.
7. Lastly, always end the call by thanking the interviewer for her/his time and always, always, always wait until she/he disconnects the call from their end to squeal in joy or thank the almighty or sigh loudly as a sign of relief or to do your little victory/happy dance. Failure to do so might result in missing key information that often comes at the end of phone calls in the form of: “one more thing I wanted to say…” or “by the way, do you…” or “sorry I forgot to ask this before….” etc.
Some other important reminders:
When you are actively looking for work, you are sending resumes to multiple employers and possibly, recruiters. Even if you are not seeking opportunities, hiring managers may contact you from an old resume that you might have uploaded a long time ago on job-board – and that phone call could really be the beginning of a great new chapter of your professional life. So unscheduled calls, while relatively rare, still happen quite regularly.
For unscheduled or impromptu calls, if you are really unprepared (or if the phone call comes at an inconvenient time), feel free to tell your interviewer that you are almost out of charge and might get disconnected any moment in the event your phone battery is showing the dreaded thin red line. I do not advocate lying under any circumstances, but it might also give you some strategic advantage in order to buy yourself some time to quickly prepare for the phone interview.
Make sure your voicemail –
- is set up or has been initialized
- has room for new messages,
- does not include any off-putting language or profanity, music, or any ‘gimmick’ of any kind in the greeting; and
- includes a greeting that is polite, professional, includes your name and the best time to reach you, and contains the best phone number (and/or email address) to reach you if that is different from the phone number where you are receiving the voicemail.
In the event you are unable to talk to the interviewer, your voicemail greeting message is the first impression you are putting out there to all the potential employers to have access to – so, make it count! When a recruiter/interviewer/hiring manager is calling a prospective candidate, nothing could be a bigger turn-off for them, than being welcomed with an unprofessional voicemail greeting or hearing that “this mailbox is full.”
There you have it. Our seven tips to ensure your next telephone interview goes as smoothly as possible. Please let us know what you think about these tips and also write about your experiences with telephone interviews in the comment section below.