Conducting a Telephone Interview

Vaibhav Gupta

• Publisher: Packt Publishing
• Year: 2014
• ISBN:
  9781783000371
• Edition: 2
• Topic: Computer Science
• Subtopic: Information Technology
• Index: Computer Science

This book is designed for managers and HR professionals who have to conduct telephone interviews and wish to improve their technique in order to get the most out of the recruitment process.

Conducting a Telephone Interview

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Conducting a Telephone Interview

Copyright © 2014 Impackt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Impackt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

Impackt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals. However, Impackt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information.

First published: September 2014

Production reference: 1230914

Published by Impackt Publishing Ltd.

Livery Place

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Birmingham B3 2PB, UK.

ISBN 978-1-78300-036-4

www.Impacktpub.com

Cover image by Jarek Blaminsky (<[email protected]>)

Credits

Author

Vaibhav Gupta

Reviewers

Jason Carson

Iris Tianren Shen

Acquisition Editor

Nick Falkowski

Copy Editors

Tanvi Bhatt

Paul Hindle

Faisal Siddiqui

Project Coordinator

Venitha Cutinho

Proofreaders

Simran Bhogal

Paul Hindle

Graphics

Valentina D'silva

Abhinash Sahu

Production Coordinator

Adonia Jones

Cover Work

Melwyn D'sa

About the Author

Vaibhav Gupta is the founder and owner of the blog www.howtocrackaninterview.com. After his Master's degree in Business Administration from Leeds Business School, United Kingdom, his entrepreneurial spirit inspired him to start Oxygen Consultancy Services, a New-Delhi-based executive search and recruitment firm. The firm has been recruiting for global Banking, Insurance, Automotive, FMCG, Accounting, Research, and Business Consulting organizations including HDFC Bank, ICICI Prudential Life Insurance Company, Kotak Mahindra Bank, Nestle India Ltd., The Smart Cube India Pvt. Ltd., GE Business India Services, and KPMG. The firm has been extremely instrumental in hiring across all levels and business verticals.

Vaibhav has personally managed more than 10,000 interview cases in a period of 10 years and has also been a part of campus placement teams with many companies like ICICI Prudential Life Insurance.

He is also a visiting faculty member at prestigious institutions like Institute of Chartered Accountants of India (ICAI).

To provide comprehensive online information on the interview process and its basic nuances, he started the blog www.howtocrackaninterview.com, in which he has tried to provide an extremely broad and detailed spectrum of information regarding the interview process through highly interactive videos.

He has also authored Job Winning Answers – Best answers to 105 trickiest interview questions.

Acknowledgments

My book Conducting a Telephone Interview has not been created solely by me. There are a large number of people who have contributed directly or indirectly towards the making of this book. This book would not be complete without acknowledging those who have devoted their time and effort during the making of this book.

The biggest contributors are those 800 employees from various organizations across the globe who participated in my survey regarding telephone interviews and provided their honest feedback which provided the authenticity to my experience and interpretations. I would also like to thank my clients who I have worked with as a recruitment consultant over the last 10 years and who have been the greatest sources of my learning and experience in the field of hiring and interviews.

I would also like to thank Mr. Jason Carson—Director of Labour Relations/Human Resources and Safety at Brilion Iron Works, United States, profusely, as he supported my theories and clarified my doubts through his invaluable input. Despite being extremely busy, the enthusiasm and promptness with which he provided detailed answers to questions that I asked is commendable.

I cannot forget to thank P. Harihar—Senior Engineer, ARM, United Kingdom, who shared his experience of the telephone interview process and provided strength to the concepts and their advantages that are advocated in this book.

I would like to dedicate this book to my wife, Dr. Reena Gupta, and our beloved son, Maulik, who supported me in the greatest possible manner by being extremely understanding while I was juggling my time between carrying out my regular job and writing this book.

Everything I am capable of doing today is because of the world class education that my parents, Mrs. Neera Gupta and Mr. Anil Kumar Gupta, have provided to me using all possible means available to them, and I thank them from the bottom of my heart.

Finally, I would like to thank the publisher, Impackt Publishing, and their team of coordinators and editors for providing me with a great opportunity to write this book, showing faith in the content that I provided, and providing tips to refine the language of the book in order to make it a worthwhile reading experience.

About the Reviewers

Jason Carson has over 20 years of progressive human resource experience. Mr. Carson has worked for companies such as Walgreens, McDonalds Corp, Oshkosh Corp, Masco Corp, and currently works for Appvion in Appleton, WI. Mr. Carson is a business executive with proven ability to help design programs and create solutions that are both bottom-line-oriented and focused on long term success. This includes a strong focus on financial performance, operational success, and alignment of crucial talent to key linchpin positions. He has experience in both startups and turn-around opportunities, specializing in leading change throughout an organization.

Iris Tianren Shen is a Talent Sourcing Specialist working for Randstad Technologies, headhunting the most talented IT and financial professionals everyday for Fortune 500 companies. She started her career as a Career Assistant and realized her true passion was in talent acquisition, career planning, and HR consulting. She has guided hundreds of professionals with active listening, career advice, and new opportunity exploration.

Born in mainland China, Iris graduated from the University of Toronto with a Psychology degree, and has paved her recruiting career path with intrinsic interests, persistence, and faith in Canada. In her spare time, Iris devotes her efforts to volunteering to help children with autism and people in need.

Preface

In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell patented one of the most revolutionary inventions the world has ever seen: the telephone. It was a device that transmitted voice through electrical signals through wires. A tribute to human ingenuity, within decades the telephone possessed the power to alter the concept of global communications. While brilliant engineers are rightly credited for the creation of great technological advancements, we should not forget that dynamic business managers are owed acclaim for their commercial expansion. After more than a century of global commercial development, the telephone interview is the modern heir of Bell's first famous telephone call to summon his assistant to his work room.

The telephone interview, though just a speck on the global communications sphere, is worthy of careful consideration as an important skill with a specific purpose. Getting it right can make all the difference to your business. Although some employers have been using the telephone as a precursor to face-to-face interviews for decades, the world is changing. Interviewing remotely has never before been given the prominence that it enjoys today, especially since the most recent global economic downturn in 2008.

These tumultuous times have forced all hiring managers to appreciate the importance of searching for and hiring global talent through the most cost-effective means available. It has also differentiated the top performers from the average candidates. Money alone won't attract top talent; one needs to offer more to lure the best employees. This has led to the amalgamation of hiring and sales processes.

This book focuses on creating a holistic approach to the telephone interview as an effective and cost-saving hiring strategy. Over five chapters, we'll cover the best ways to make the most of interviewing by telephone.

What this book covers

Chapter 1, The Telephone Interview and Its Role in Hiring, explains why you should include telephonic interviews as a key part of your hiring process, and analyzes and explains the benefits and savings they can potentially deliver. The chapter will show you how the telephone interview, if planned and conducted properly, can bring a strong positive impact on an organization's employee strategy.

Chapter 2, Are You Doing It Correctly?, gives you the capability to review and examine how you conduct telephone interviews currently as a basis for improving. As you read this chapter, it will encourage you to self-assess your current preparation process for telephonic interviews. It will help you set benchmarks that will act as comparison and measurement tools.

Chapter 3, Plan, Conduct, and Assess, will cover organizing an assessment strategy that has been designed to facilitate the hiring of the most competent candidate with the minimum financial outlay. Do you want to select the most competent candidate with minimum resources outlay? Optimizing each process and minimizing the risks in order to achieve the business objectives is what every manager aims at. Every recruiter wants to hire the best available candidate for a vacant job role. But hiring the best needs "planning". This chapter takes you through the essentials of planning—both on a micro and macro scale—and provides you with the necessary tools you need to conduct a highly optimized telephone interview process.

Chapter 4, Avoid Common Mistakes, lists all the commonly made mistakes a recruiter can make at any of the stages provided in the previous chapter and provides solutions and advice on how to avoid or fix them. "Trial and error" isn't a bad technique to understand the mistakes and correct them in many aspects of life and business. In some cases, it is almost considered essential, but recruitment doesn't belong to this theory. So it will be much better if recruiters can learn from the mistakes others made and avoid repeating them. Managing a bad hire can be the most harrowing experience for an organization. Therefore it's better to prepare an error-free telephonic recruiti...

Table of contents

• Conducting a Telephone Interview