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Effective Phone Interviews

by | Sep 22, 2021 | Hiring Tips | 0 comments

By: Ashley Nowicki

You received some candidates and you’re wondering what to do next. Sure, you can send an email to the candidate to show your interest. But calling candidates creates a good first impression of the interview process. Doing phone interviews helps you and the candidate decide if it’s a good fit before doing an in-person interview. If you want to do an efficient phone interview, it should last about 45 minutes to see if the candidate will be a great fit.

During the phone interview, you want to make sure you have a notepad or a word document open so you can take notes during the interview, or you can use the comments feature in IdealTraits.

The first thing you want to do is introduce yourself over the phone and make sure the candidate is still interested in the position. If the candidate is still interested, you can continue on with the interview. When you’re in the beginning of the interview, you want to make sure you go over the responsibilities just to make sure the candidate is clear on what they’re interviewing for. The next step is to go over salary expectations. You may have your salary listed, but you want to make sure you are on the same page with the candidate. Moving on to their experience, this is where you will ask about their prior work experience as well as their education.

Lastly, you will ask a few questions either based on their assessment result (which is found in our Help Center) or any position specific questions you have to ask.

To wrap up the phone call, thank them for taking the time to interview them and let them know you’ll be in touch with your decision. Now, after the interview if you don’t feel like the candidate is a good fit, this is where you would send a rejection letter (which we have integrated into IdealTraits). Always make sure you have some sort of communication with the candidate even if you’re not interested in the candidate in order to create a positive candidate experience.

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