ARTICLE

Tips for Interviewing Using Conference Calls

Conference call services are useful not only for business meetings, but also interviews and social calls. If you want to conduct an interview over the telephone, you can make use of the teleconferencing services provided by reputed companies.

Interviewing, whether it is face to face or over the telephone, is a skill. Within just a few minutes you are required to assess the qualities and aptitude of a person and make a judgement on whether the candidate is suitable for the job and is a fit for the organisation. These days more and more companies are relying on conference calls to find the right candidate. This is especially relevant in a global economy where the candidate with the right skill sets could be located anywhere in the world. It is illogical and expensive to get everyone to come to your office premises for a face to face interview for every round. The trend is to conduct a preliminary screening, then the candidate is launched into teleconferencing with managers, the HR personnel and finally the reporting manager. All the interviewers make extensive use of conferencing services to assess the candidate.

An interview teleconference is pretty much like any other voice conference. The interviewer and the interviewee dial into the conference bridge and start call conferencing. Interviews may make use of video conferencing solutions in addition to the voice conferencing solution. This helps the interviewers assess candidates’ body language too.

Phone conferencing for an interview can be a highly productive but depends upon thorough preparation on the part of the interviewer and interviewee ahead the call. The following are some tips to ensure that phone interview is a success.

1. Use telephone conferencing as a way to screen and shortlist a pool of candidates.
2. Prepare in advance. Go through the candidate’s resume and prepare the list of questions to ask.
3. It is important to keep the call moving, a telephone interview is not the place to shuffle through papers trying to frame the next question.
4. Try and avoid dead spots. If there is a lot of dead air on the call, you will appear unprofessional and ill-prepared.
5. Keep the applicant's resume handy to refer to when needed.
6. Communicate very clearly about the position that you are interviewing for.
7. Ask the applicant to elaborate on his skills and work experience. Think about how this will translate into your work environment.
8. You need to decide whether it is worth pursuing this applicant further, perhaps with a face to face interview.
9. If you want to pursue this further, invite the candidate to meet with you in person.
10. Always end the call on a professional note.

A call recording of the conference is extremely useful in assessing the candidate’s performance after the event and also to distribute to other members of the interview panel.