telephone interview

Telephone Interview

As the name suggests this is basically just an interview over the telephone.

This has the advantage of keeping costs low for both sides.

When you have passed they previous recruitment stage the company phone you to say that you have been successful. They ask you what date and time would suit you to have the telephone interview, so make sure that you are not working or busy when you confirm a date and time with them.

They then email you to confirm the date and time once more.

When it comes to the telephone interview you have to be extremely prepared! You will need to know all about the company and their core businesses because they will ask you questions on this.

As well as questions on the company they will ask you roughly about 15 questions where you need to provide practical examples of something that you did.

For instance, they may ask you to “Describe a situation where you provided excellent customer service?”

When answering this question there are 3 rules that you must follow:

• State what situation you are going to talk about

  e.g. I am going to talk about when I provided excellent customer service in my part time job with (the company you work for)....”

• Describe what happened fully and clearly

• Lastly and most importantly state what the outcome of the situation was

  e.g. I received an Outstanding Service Award from my company because the customer was so pleased with my level of service”

It is crucial that you use these 3 rules for every question that you answer especially the last part. You will be asked a range of questions like this where you always need to provide an example so take time to think about the question and make sure that your example relates to the question.

Also, remember that the example does not always have to be about university work or your current employer, it could be about your social life, for example, a night out you organized for a group of your friends!

This may seem inappropriate but there is a lot of communication, organizing and responsibility involved in preparing for a night out with a large number of people like booking the venue, making sure the venue and the food suits everyone as well as the price. Also collecting money and people trusting you with their money.

All of these tasks show what you are capable of so do not be scared of using examples like this.

There are also a few guidelines to remember when having a telephone interview:

• Use a proper and polite manner on the telephone
• Do not rush to answer the question, think it over first of all and take your time to answer it.
• May be a good idea to have a pen and paper at hand just to note down the main points of the question. This will save you asking to repeat the question.
• When answering the question always begin with an introduction to what you are going to discuss, then the actual example and then always remember the most important part – the outcome of this example.
• When all the questions have been asked thank the person for their time and ask when you will find out the result.

Finally, when the telephone interview is over they will contact you via email to say whether you have reached the next stage or not.

The next stage being the Assessment Centre

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