Phone interviews allow you to call your most promising job applicants before bringing them in for a job interview in your organisation. The phone interview enables you to screen the applicant’s experience, skills, knowledge, experience and salary expectations before you invest valuable time in face to face interviews.
The phone interview enables you to methodically assess applicants that appear suitable on paper, but perhaps fall short in terms of experience or qualifications. In essence, it allows you to eliminate those who appear to be less qualified or might be a poor cultural fit for your clients’ organisation.
The phone interview saves your company effort, time, money and the energy that your recruiting team invests in every applicant. A phone interview is time well spent by your hiring manager and you can fast track or short list your most qualified applicants for your interview process. The phone screens allow you to hold off on interviews with less-qualified candidates.
Who should conduct the phone interview?
The best person to conduct a phone interview is the hiring consultant. He or she is most in tune with the qualifications and experience required by the client.
The hiring consultant will have to work most closely with the selected candidate/s.He or she has the detailed requirements and summary of the client’s needs to assess the skills of the prospective employee.
Questions for the phone interview
Questions for the phone interview can comprise a subset of the interview questions that your consultant has prepared for use in the face to face interviews. You should also create phone interview questions as part of the recruitment planning process.
The basic questions asked in the phone screen should be the same questions for each prospective candidate. Follow-up questions to clarify or obtain more information will not be the same, of course, but consistency in the basic questions are essential.
The employee who conducts the interview should take detailed interview notes just as he or she would in a face to face interview.
A phone screen should take half an hour to an hour depending on the questions and responses. To respect the candidate’s time and that of the interviewer, we recommend thirty minutes.
Asking the candidate for the salary range that they are hoping to receive in any potential job offer is a good early question. You can assess whether you are in the same ballpark and this could save you both time in the long run.
After the phone interview
Review and assess the qualifications of each candidate who participated in the phone interview with the consultant managing the assignment to determine which candidates to involve in your face to face interview process.