Our primary objective will be to secure you a face to face interview. If, however, you are not based in the country of the hiring manager then occasionally a telephone will have to be conducted.
It is important to note that any telephone interview is purely a screening exercise to establish whether or not to invite you to a face to face interview.
We will try to arrange for you to initiate the call to our client. Failing this, we will ask our client to call you at a pre- determined time and ideally on a land line not a mobile.
A quiet environment is crucial and one with no background noise as you must be able to hear clearly the questions of the interviewer and they must be able to hear your responses.
Many of the same rules that apply to a face to face interview apply to a telephone interview but with the added difficulty that you cannot see the interviewer’s facial gestures and body language. As such, your listening skills and your questioning skills are crucial.
You should have your CV in front of you in the same format as the interviewer. We will send to you your CV in our corporate format. This is important as you both need to be looking at the same document.
Establish how long the interviewer has allocated for the interview. Use the time carefully. Listen carefully to the questions of the interviewer. Try to avoid interrupting and giving long winded answers but look for natural gaps in the conversation to ask questions and avoid going off on tangents. Use phrases such as “Have I answered that question fully enough for you?” to check that the interviewer is getting the information they need. .Remember silence is actually a very powerful tool in a telephone interview. Use it to your advantage
When asking a closing question such as “Is there anything I have said to you in our conversation so far that would prevent you from inviting me to a second interview?” Then, STAY SILENT……..……..Make the interviewer answer the question…..Say it again if necessary. If they say yes but I am not sure about x or y , then you can close out on any misunderstanding or if they highlight a genuine weakness you can miximise the benefits you bring whilst minimizing the drawback.
If they answer no then you can simply close with, “ Then can we agree a date for me to meet with you ? Which would you prefer, the 17th or the 23rd?” (the alternative close )
Remember the objective is a simple one: for you to get a commitment from the interviewer to invite you to the next stage of the selection process. Anything less than this is potential failure as one of your competitors may already have secured that commitment.
