Surprise! Your Interview Is on the Phone

Recently, a number of recruiters have called me out of the blue to do a prescreen interview over the phone for their clients. While such calls are always welcome, you have to be on your toes when you answer the phone. Typically, these calls come first thing in the morning, as it seems the recruiters are organizing their activities to have candidates at the ready. In fact, one recruiter even called me at 7:30 a.m. his time to be sure to reach me before noon East Coast time.

I've learned to keep my phone fully charged overnight and to answer every call with a cheerful, "Good morning, Jane speaking." It would be Murphy's law to have the best job opportunity be calling and suddenly the phone's power dies. Given that my resume has been circulated a good deal in the last few months, it is no longer a good assumption that an unknown number on caller ID is a telemarketer rather than someone with a solid job possibility.

Most of the time, these screening phone interviews are to help potential employers quickly find out a few facts. So far, in 5 out of 5 surprise calls I’ve received, the screeners were inquiring about:

1. my most recent employment or employer 
2. my last base salary
3. what I had been doing since my layoff 
4. and which other firms had I been interviewing with to date.

So I've prepared short sound bites to answer each of these questions in addition to having my elevator pitch rehearsed. I also use the call as an opportunity to learn more about the particular firm that is hiring.

The hardest thing about these surprise screening interviews is to immediately jump into a mindset so that you click with the speaker. The click is important, as this screening person will advocate on your behalf to get you to the next level of interviewing. After my first surprise interview, I learned to immediately get laser-focused as I approach the conversation at hand. I shut out all other interruptions/distractions. In fact, I’ll even ask the interviewer to hold for 30 seconds or so while I secure a quiet corner given the importance of this conversation. If you need a little time like that, it is perfectly all right to ask for it as long as you remain professional and considerate.

In every case, the surprise telephone interview has ended up with a request for me to provide a resume and a promise from the recruiter to get it in front of the hiring manager. I always make sure to tailor the resume specifically to the job’s hiring criteria before sending.

Your surprise telephone interview is a good benchmark about the dynamics the hiring company is expecting the screener to address and fulfill. Fortunately, none of these surprise calls have come in via video telephone capabilities, but that's not too far away. I've been told that some formal interviews have been done by video and that requires a unique set of preparation skills and solid execution finesse. So far, I have not encountered anyone in my large network of fellow unemployed compatriots who has either been successful or unsuccessful with a video interview. So far, only surprise telephone screening interviews seem to be the norm given employers’ desires to minimize interviewing costs in time and energy.

How have you dealt with surprise telephone interviews?

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