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Accomplish January 10, 2019
Speedy tips for interviews on speed dial.
Phone interviews and interviews, in general, can often lead to one thing: anxiety. I know I’ve been there. What if I forget about the call? What if my phone dies? What time zone am I in anyway? For some reason, I never thought to look up phone interview tips before my interview to help me answer these questions and mitigate my anxiety. Instead, I panicked and triple-checked the time hours before the call.
Which is why I’ve put together this list — to help you avoid the worry and anxiety I suffered through. So check out these phone interview tips to keep you calm, collected and prepared.
Luckily, you don’t have to dress up for this type of interview. But instead of worrying about your outfit, now you have to worry about your tech running smoothly.
This includes battery level. Your recruiter will not be impressed if your call dies halfway through the conversation.
The day of my interviews I always pack a charger in my backpack in case I have to do an impromptu call outside my room. To ensure everything goes smoothly, I also highly recommend plugging in your phone during the interview. Take that, low battery.
Out of all these phone interview tips, this advice might seem the most unnecessary. You know how to make a call. Why would you have to practice that?
If your phone is a little old and nonfunctional (and even if it isn’t!), it would be good to test your service to make sure everything works. Your interviewer will probably be understanding if unexpected technological emergencies come up, but they could also blame you for lack of preparation. Do a quick one-minute call with a friend to check if the reception is good in your area and everything works as it should.
If the call fails, test another area. If it still doesn’t work, your phone or provider could be causing the issues. Now you know to borrow someone else’s phone! Crisis averted.
18-year-old me missed more than one important phone call, so she would’ve loved any phone interview tips to help her remember the time.
Luckily, I am now (supposedly) wiser and older. Since then, I’ve learned that setting an alarm can help you make any call you’d otherwise miss.
So if you want to kill time before your interview starts, set an alarm five minutes before the scheduled call, and you’re good to work on whatever you want! Simply make sure to test your ringer beforehand.
And if you’re with friends on the day of the interview, mention it to them. Sometimes, saying your schedule out loud can cement the time in your brain. And if your friends are top-notch, they might even remind you that your call is coming up!
But in case you do miss your call, Ryerson University advises setting up a professional voicemail. So if your voice recording is some joke from middle school, change it. You don’t want a recruiter to hear your 12-year-old voice and reject you.
Start looking for a quiet area about 15 minutes before the interview, especially if you’re away from your own apartment or room. It’s extremely unprofessional to conduct a job interview in busy spots like restaurants or stores. Interviewers who hear background noise will (correctly) assume that you didn’t prepare for their call.
So avoid running from building to building trying to find a silent space. Think ahead and designate a location you can use well before your scheduled call.
Before you start looking for a quiet place, though, there’s something you need to take care of.
If you think you can discreetly go to the bathroom while you’re on a call, you’re wrong. My phone interviews are usually about 15 minutes long, so if I do need to go, I probably could hold it. But you’re never really sure how long an interview could last. To keep your bases covered, take care of your business before taking care of actual business.
Besides dressing however you want, phone interviews have other benefits. If you need it, you can look at your professional documents for guidance in your answers. While you definitely shouldn’t rely on these resources, it’s nice to know that a cheat sheet is out in front of you.
I also keep a pen and paper handy to take notes. At the end of the interview, if they allow me to ask questions, it’s nice to have a reference. And after the conversation, you can always use these notes to research intriguing or confusing information from the recruiter.
But whatever you do, don’t look up answers during an interview. People can hear you stall or type as you research their company. You also don’t want your phone to crash or mess with the call while you’re searching through other applications. Candidates who play it safe, research before the call and prepare their answers thoroughly won’t even need the extra help.
Out of all the phone interview tips I can give you, this is probably the most important: don’t treat the call as a “lesser” sort of interview. You are still expected to be as professional as possible. Besides checking your resume or dressing down, don’t do anything you wouldn’t do in front of a recruiter.
Other than that, stay calm. A phone interview isn’t anything out of the ordinary. So take a breath, lay out your resume and press call! You’re going to kill it.
