by John J. Walters<\/p>\n
I started thinking about phone interviews today because I saw one of my Facebook buddies posted that he had accidentally scheduled two of them for this afternoon.\u00c2\u00a0 Then I started thinking about how phone interviews are pretty much no different from conference calls, except there often won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be too many other people listening.\u00c2\u00a0 So if phone interviews are similar to conference calls then it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s just a hop, skip, and a jump to liken them to meetings in general.\u00c2\u00a0 And you know what that means, right?\u00c2\u00a0 It means I get to write about them — as if I know what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m talking about!<\/p>\n
As a matter of fact, I do know what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m talking about.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m no stranger to the phone interview.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve been conducting them semi-regularly for the past year for various projects for Wasabi Ventures<\/a> and have also had to do quite a few for my other employer, The Maryland Public Policy Institute<\/a>.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, nearly a quarter of my job consists of calling folks and talking to them about this or that.\u00c2\u00a0 So I figured I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d share a little bit of what I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve learned over the past year about phone interviews.<\/p>\n First of all, in answer to my own question: no, I don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t wear a tie to a phone interview.\u00c2\u00a0 But I do make a point to try and be as professional as possible when I conduct one.\u00c2\u00a0 In fact, I try to make sure that I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122m at least presentable whenever I sit at my desk and work, even though I work from home.\u00c2\u00a0 This helps create a clearer divide between my work and home life.\u00c2\u00a0 If a tie helped me do that, I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122d wear one.\u00c2\u00a0 It\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s about feeling comfortable, but also like you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re \u00e2\u20ac\u0153at work.\u00e2\u20ac\u009d\u00c2\u00a0 Ties kinda lost that feeling for me when I had to wear one every single day in high school.<\/p>\n Phone interviews have become pretty normal to me, but I can remember how I felt about them before they became my bread and butter.\u00c2\u00a0 Until I became comfortable, I had to make it a point to make sure that I was in a familiar location and that I knew I was well-prepared.\u00c2\u00a0 This meant reviewing notes or articles about the subject beforehand while listening to relaxing music.\u00c2\u00a0 I would make a point of being in my office with the door closed at least ten minutes before the interview was scheduled just to focus.<\/p>\n Knowing your material is also very important.\u00c2\u00a0 I would review for my interviews starting a day ahead of time and then again a little bit beforehand just to make sure I remembered what I was looking at earlier (just like a test at school).\u00c2\u00a0 If you\u00e2\u20ac\u2122re asking the questions your job is a little easier, but you still need to prepare or else it\u00e2\u20ac\u2122s easy to get lost and ask a whole lot of useless questions that don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t pertain to the topic at hand.\u00c2\u00a0 Having been on both sides several times I would say both can be a challenge, and it certainly helps to do some rehearsing on your own.<\/p>\n Of course, none of these are hard and fast rules.\u00c2\u00a0 I\u00e2\u20ac\u2122ve also conducted interviews in my car in a Wal-Mart parking lot with my laptop on my knees (although that was more out of necessity than choice).\u00c2\u00a0 But the keys to successfully getting your point across are preparation and relaxation.\u00c2\u00a0 You would do the same if you were walking into an office and speaking with someone in person, so don\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t forget to take the phone interview just as seriously.\u00c2\u00a0 Take advantage of whatever helps you do that, be it a tie or a security blanket.<\/p>\n Also, keep in mind that what works for conversations between two people can also work in larger groups.\u00c2\u00a0 These same recommendations go equally for conference calls.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" by John J. Walters I started thinking about phone interviews today because I saw one of my Facebook buddies posted that he had accidentally scheduled two of them for this afternoon.\u00c2\u00a0 Then I started thinking about how phone interviews are pretty much no different from conference calls, except there often won\u00e2\u20ac\u2122t be too many other […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[7],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=22"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/22\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=22"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=22"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/blog.meetingcaptain.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=22"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}