Telephone Interviews as Easy as 1, 2, 3!

In a tight economy, smart organizations seize opportunities to lower recruiting and hiring costs. The telephone interview or telephone screening is one great way employers are keep recruiting and hiring costs down.

Rapidly advancing telecommunication technology is enabling employers to add to the complexity of the telephone interview. For example, telephone interviews can now be conducted with one jobseeker and one interviewer or one job seeker with multiple interviewers on an interview panel .

With free conference call services or on-line meeting web technology, the interview panel can now be completely distributed. In other words, a jobseeker can converse with 4 or 5 interviewers who are all in different locations. The bottom line is that the telephone interview is here to stay and can be a very effective tool to screen job seekers.

What does that mean for the jobseeker? it means that job seekers must get comfortable with the telephone interview and know how to impress the recruiter through this medium. With the telephone interview, where neither interviewer nor jobseeker can see each other, both recruiter and jobseeker have to be aware of three things - Tone, Clarity and Energy. Mastering the interview is as easy as 1-2-3 if you understand this.

If I were to rank the three, I would probably put them in the following order:

1. Energy - Job seekers should try and stay high energy from beginning to end of the telephone interview.
2. Tone - Limiting sarcasm or negativity is the way to go since it is harder to "read" the interviewer.
3. Clarity - Listening carefully to the question will help jobseekers stay focused so as not to go off on a tangent answering the wrong question. In a face-to-face interview a quick gesture from the interviewer could abort the wrong answer. Without seeing the interviewer, the jobseeker must rely on listening skills.

Interviews are uncomfortable enough and the telephone interview adds another layer of complexity. Understanding energy, tone and clarity will help job seekers enhance their candidacy.