The Phone Screen

Assuming you pass the gauntlet of the outside recruiters and/or the HR screeners, your first contact with the hiring company will be a phone interview.

The purpose of a phone screen is basically to filter out any candidates who are obviously wrong for the job. Sometimes an HR person will screen you first, followed by a techie. They will have different approaches but the goal is the same in both cases: to look for any glaring problems that will keep the company from bringing you in for an interview.

Your job then as a candidate in a phone screen is simple: Don’t screw up. This means you should not try to dazzle the phone interviewer with your brilliance; such attempts often backfire over the phone in the absence of body language. Just answer the questions in a straightforward manner and don’t get too fancy.

Another reason people get rejected at the phone screen is communication skills. I have had many phone conversations where I just could not understand what the other person was saying. Either they had a heavy accent, or the answers they gave just didn’t make sense (in terms of grammar). So as a candidate you should make sure you enunciate clearly and give clear, lucid answers. And by all means, if you don’t understand a question, don’t say, “Huh?” or “What?”