Interviewing

Top 3 Tips for Telephone Interviews

Wendy Terwelp 1 Comment

Today, I’m excited to welcome guest author and syndicated columnist, Joyce Lain Kennedy who has provided her Top 3 Tips for Telephone Interviews: 

1. The telephone call is a screening call. The interviewer aims to be sure that your qualifications meet the requirements of the position. Draw verbal links between a company’s requirements and your qualifications: “You want X, I offer X; you want Y, I offer Y; you want Z, I offer Z.” Make the connection!

When the call comes in unsolicited and you don’t already know the requirements of a position, ask: “To be sure we’re clear on this position, can you tell me the job’s requirements?” Take notes and connect the dots.

2. Make phone appointments. Whenever possible, don’t answer questions on the fly when the call comes in. And especially don’t interview on your cell phone while you’re out and about. You won’t be prepared and you won’t do your best. Schedule an appointment for your phone interview. Say that you’re walking out the door to a meeting across town and will call back as quickly as you can:

“Thank you for calling. I appreciate your attention. I’m very interested in speaking with you about my qualifications. Unfortunately, this is not a good time for me — I’m headed out the door. Can I call you back in an hour?”

If a recruiter insists on calling you back rather than the other way around, do what you would do for any other interview: Be ready early as a reminder to interview as a professional. Change out of your jeans and into the type of clothing you’d wear in a  business meeting. Most importantly, treat the call as an overture to an in-room meeting. And remember, a smile makes your voice sound better.

3. Don’t blow off the screening call. Interviewers ask about your experience, skills, competencies, education, your inconvenient geography, and whether your financial requirement is too low or too high for the job’s predetermined compensation range. (Know in advance the market pay range for various jobs by checking with such sites as salary.com.)

Use back-up phrases. After answering a question, add such follow-on phrases as “Does that answer your question?” “ Have I sufficiently answered your question about my managerial experience?” “Is this the kind of information you’re seeking?”

 Take telephone interviews seriously:

The reason to take screens seriously is that if you flunk them, you won’t be passed on to the next step in the hiring process, the selection interviewing sequence.

 Joyce Lain Kennedy (San Diego, CA) is a nationally syndicated careers columnist and the author of seven career books, including the recently released THIRD edition of Job Interviews For Dummies. For four decades, she has advised millions of readers on their career development and job search strategies.

The Great Thank You Note Debate

Wendy Terwelp Leave a comment

Oh, you didn’t know there was a debate, eh?

The Do’s:

“It’s the right thing to do,” said multiple sources including recruiters, employers, and career coaches. I agree, but here’s how to say THANKS the right way:

1. Always thank whomever for their time. Mention something personal, even if it is minor, that you learned about that person during the interview. If you are dropping the note to the secretary, mention how helpful or how pleasant they were during your wait.

2. Enclose a proposal or action plan regarding what you could do for the company. How you can SOLVE THEIR PROBLEM (whatever it was). You can mention accomplishments of yours that might be relevant to their situation. (Use your professional resume. There should be several listed from which you can choose!) This type of action plan makes you PROACTIVE. And shows how much you listened during the interview, how much you care about their company, and how much you’re dying to be a part of it.

3. If you interviewed several people, you may wish to enclose a second resume as a MEMORY JOGGER.

4. You want your letter to show your enthusiasm for the position/company, your compatibility with their team, how their goals match your goals, and your desire for the job! People have actually LOST positions because they didn’t ASK for the job. 

“It puts the candidate at the top of the call-if-(the)-No. 1-(candidate)-doesn’t-work list. In 5 years at Harvard, I saw this happen at least once a quarter,” said Susan P. Joyce, Editor/Webmaster, at Job-Hunt.org. She is “pro” thank you notes. 

“As a former hiring manager, I would be totally impressed with someone who wrote an appropriate thank you card,” said Jason Alba of JibberJobber.com. “It is above and beyond an e-mail, and shows a lot of thought. It is a gesture that would help me know that this person would take care of (internal and external) customers.” 

“In some situations, when considered with the interview, the thank you note had influence as to whether or not to extend an offer of employment,” said Steve Gallison, Professional Outplacement Assistance Center. 

As a former recruiter, I can tell you that Steve is right. I still remember getting a call from one employer saying, “Chris is fantastic! Do you know he FAXED over a hand-written thank you note right after his interview? WOW. When can he start?” Yes, Chris got the job. The employer had never received a thank you note from anyone in the past. The note made Chris stand out. Another client landed a job at Microsoft. The thank you note he sent got him over the top.

The Do NOT’s:

“Thank you notes are a waste of my time,” said one recruiter. “No one ever reads them.”

Not true. According to one executive recruiter, her candidate – who had aced the interview – lost the job offer. How? She sent a thank you note with spelling errors, typos, and bad grammar.

Of course thank you notes that just say, “Thanks for your time” are a waste of my time, said one HR director.

Instead, use this key paragraph provided by Don Orlando, MBA, of The McLean Group: “I want to do more than just thank you for your time. I was thinking about your problems and I have some ideas to help solve them. I know they must be tentative, but I’d like to get your reaction to them.” Check out No. 2 above for strategies to back up your claim.

Companies hire people who can solve their problems. Demonstrate how you can do so – and you’ve got a greater chance of getting in the door with a solid offer.

Am I a fan of thank-you notes? You bet.

You said what on your interview?!

Wendy Terwelp 1 Comment

Thanks to Jackie Farwell of The Associated Press for providing these lovlies courtesy of a recent poll by staffing firm Accountemps. In this poll executives were asked to name the wackiest pitch they’d ever heard from a job seeker. Here are some of their responses:  

“An individual told me he was allergic to unemployment.”

 

“One candidate said that we should hire him because he would be a great addition to our softball team.”

 

“A person said he had no relevant experience for the position he was interviewing for, but his friend did.”

 

“One person brought his mother to the job interview and let her do all the talking.”

 

“One job seeker said he should get the job because he had already applied three times and felt that it was now his turn.”

 

“One candidate sang all of her responses to interview questions.”

 

“One individual said we had nice benefits, which was good because he was going to need to take a lot of leave in the next year.”

 

The nonscientific national poll included responses from 150 senior executives with the nation’s 1,000 largest companies.

 

Want to be a rock star on your next interview? Check out these interview tips right here: www.knocks.com/news.html. Enjoy!

Interviewing: What’s your ROI?

Wendy Terwelp 2 Comments

Are you a Matt Damon or a Russell Crowe?

Here’s an exerpt from today’s ERE.net ezine:

“Let’s look at an example to illustrate the ROI of top actors. If you were going to hire a well-known actor for an upcoming action movie you could pick from many obvious choices like Russell Crowe, Tom Cruise, Johnny Depp, Brad Pitt, Matt Damon, and Angelina Jolie, or you could hire “Joe Nobody.”

Each of the well-known actors will cost you significantly more than hiring an unknown newcomer, but each also has a demonstrated ability to attract a greater return. Forbes.com recently completed a calculation of the ROI of top actors and what it found was:

  • Matt Damon returned $29 in gross movie revenue for every dollar that he was paid (29X or 29 times his salary).
  • Brad Pitt returned $24 for every dollar that he was paid.
  • Tom Cruise returned only $12 for every dollar in pay.
  • Russell Crowe returned only $5 for every dollar in pay (five times his salary).

It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to do these calculations. The results, even to an untrained eye, are startling. If you hire Matt Damon, he will return nearly six times more per dollar invested than Russell Crowe. That’s not a 6% difference; it’s a 600% difference! If the comparison was made broader to include the comparison of hiring “Joe Nobody” as a lead actor (instead of a noted star), the difference in the ROI would simply be mind-blowing.

The lesson to be learned here is that the “on-the-job performance” of the hire (often called quality of hire) can be quantified and converted into dollars in the sports and the entertainment industry and that the same calculation needs to be done by the recruiting function in the corporate world.” (Author: Dr. John Sullivan)

So, you’re not an actor, why is this important? It is essential to know how employers look at you when hiring. Next time you are on an interview, think about what you bring to the table that no one else does.

Calculate your ROI – on a per project basis. Take a look at your performance over the past few years. Is there a project you worked on where the resulting savings was more than your salary? If so, how much more? Or if you add up all the projects, ideas, suggestions, enhancements, improvements you made to the organization over the term you were employed, how much money did you save the company? How much – in terms of revenue – did you bring in through yours (or your team’s) sales efforts? By what percentage did you improve the company’s bottom line?

When you calculate these numbers against your salary, are you a Matt Damon or a Russell Crowe? Be sure to convey your star ROI in terms of results on your next interview.

Rock on.