It’s funny to me how easy it is to fail a phone screen – both as the interviewer, and as the interviewee – especially considering the fact that the purpose of a phone screen is to determine whether a candidate is worth bringing in for an interview. That’s a pretty low bar, and yet…
Getting Phone Screened
What qualifies a phone screened candidate worth bringing in for another look? Well, some of that is objective, but here’s a pretty universal list. You, as the candidate, must:
- appear to have ever had hands on the technology in question.
- be understood over the phone.
- sound reasonably professional.
- seem remotely interested in the position.
Fella. Buddy. Guy. Gal. My friend. You’re basically looking to show that (A) you and this position are at least within shouting distance of each other (that’s item 1), and (B) that you’re neither a raging psychopath nor a drooling idiot (items 2-4).
On the shouting distance front: It’s probably not your fault if a recruiter hooked you up with a gig that’s not suited for you…lots of recruiters do this, either by accident, overzealousness, or sheer incompetence. However, it is your fault if you list 9 years of experience with a technology, and can’t answer the simplest questions about that technology. You need to have a resume that actually says what you do. You need to study up (not right before the interview, but ongoing and over time) about the fundamentals of your job. And, you need to practice your answers out loud.
Regarding psychoses/drool: A few simple dating tips will set you right. Be ready for your phone screen. Be in a quiet area. Speak clearly. Listen, then answer. Use normal, everyday manners and language. I’m looking at you, guy who couldn’t be bothered to say a simple “hello”, “good day” or “goodbye”. If you are unsure about how you come across, practice your phone skills with a partner. Or indeed, with the hold music for your credit card company.
Phone Screening
You’re phone screening for a technical position in the company, right? Of course right. Let’s look at that objective again: to determine whether the candidate is worth bringing in for an interview. That’s the standard we’re looking to meet, so everything you do should be calculated to make that determination.
Let’s assume that our interviewee has read and followed the directions above: he or she is prepared to show that he/she is reasonably well spoken, professional, remotely interested, and has put hands on the tech in question. Your job is to help them display these excellent traits, in a timely manner. This is a phone screen, after all.
Do:
- Briefly introduce yourself and explain the format of the screen. I say something like, “I’m just going to ask you 10 or so rapid-fire SQL questions, which should take about 10 minutes. Ready?”
- Ask your questions. Again, these should be devised just to prove that the candidate has touched the tech in question. When I screen for an admin position, my questions are things like “what is the difference between a full and a differential backup,” and “what’s a key lookup?”
Do NOT:
- Spend this time giving a big speech about the company, environment, benefits, etc. Remember, your job is not to sell the position.
- Spend this time trying to get a handle on the candidate’s personality. That’s hard enough to do in person. See if they meet the bare bones baseline – they’ve touched the technology, and they don’t sound like they’re likely to tear up the carpets when they come in – and move on with your life.
- Bother with getting a huge team together for the phone screen. Keep it to you and maybe one other person.
Phone Screen Failures
Among the more notable phone screen failures in my many years of IT were…
…the time I was subjected to a full 8 person, 70 minute “phone screen” with no agenda and a lot of awkward pauses.
…the time the candidate wasn’t anywhere near the phone, and indeed, sounded as if he had just woken from a deep sleep (once he finally found the phone).
…the time a recruiter insisted I jump on a phone screen for a job that was perfect for me, which turned out to be primarily for a technology I had never even heard of, much less claimed to have experience with.
…the time the candidate told me outright she was using this as a practice interview.
So, how about you? In what ways have you, a colleague, or a candidate spectacularly dive-bombed a phone screen?
Happy days,
Jen McCown
http://www.MidnightDBA.com/Jen
I once asked a question of a candidate for a DBA position what command could you use to find out information about the SQL Server version. He thought for a long moment, long enough to indicate to me that he was not going to answer and as I was moving on to the next question he yelled into the phone “STEAMBOAT”.
“Good, good, well done! Next…”
I used to be mixed on whether to phone screen or not, but I had an experience once that solidified their value.
I work for a cable company – one that puts Cable TV and Internet in your house – called CableONE. I usually start my interviews off with “tell me what you know about us” just to make sure they at least bothered to Google us before getting on the phone (spoiler alert: it’s not hard to tell if you haven’t, and I’ve found the bar for this question to be much lower than I expected), and most people have the general gist of what we do. My favorite answer to that question, though, hands-down:
“I think you make cables”
Saved me an hour of my life, and I found its much less awkward to immediately end a phone interview than I imagine it is to walk out a person you just walked in.
Ryan,
I honestly don’t know how important it is that you know about my company before an interview.
Generally, I don’t look up company information before an interview. I have a pretty good track record with turning interviews into job offers. Its been my experience that someone during the interview process will give a long spiel about the company, so I’ll get that information before I make an offer. While HR usually gives that spiel, sometimes you get that spiel from someone in the line of people you report to, so you get the useful bias of your future bosses’ understanding of the company. Once I’m in the company I’m all about making connections and understanding the culture. However, in the end I’m a developer, and I write code. If you have code that needs to be written or maintained, it doesn’t matter if it sell T-shirts, presents invoices to vendors, or does quantitative finance (all things I’ve actually done). Making a study of your web page is just going to make me go into your interview with prejudices to overcome about the size and culture of your company.
I spent this weekend at a hackathon writing code to help with the Philippine disaster effort. I went in not knowing anything about the organization or the other volunteers. If I did my homework, I would have these reasons not to go:
1. Most of the people attracted were in advertising. I’m a boring corporate drone, although I did a stint as a madison ave permatractor for a year.
2. None of the participants were windows developers except me and one other guy. I’d be working on whatever I was doing alone (and didn’t come into the hackathon with an idea to implement).
3. The organizars of the hackathon were working closely with the phillippines government. My wife is from the Phillippines and is disgusted with how the government is handling the situation.
Despite all this I was able to lay the groundwork for an app that would be useful, and others besides me want to continue working on it. The app will create more transparency and accountability to prevent the sort of issues my wife has issues with. However, if I did my homework, I’d become prejudice and not have attended this weekend.
Here’s one reason that I do a little company research before interviewing…I want to know if I even want to work for that company, and so whether or not I spend my time interviewing.
Many is the time that I have been hit up by a recruiter about a gig and asked about what company it was with. Frequently they won’t say, and it that’s the case then no thanks as if they are that secretive then I probably don’t want to work there. Other than that I want to know if the company has a good or bad reputation (things like GlassDoor help), but also what their corporate website says about the benefits of working there. I also like to know whether or not there have been layoffs recently, how their bottom line looks and whether or not they have a high staff turnover.
What it comes down to is that my time is valuable (well relatively so) and I want to be sure that I am spending it in a worthwhile manner, not wasting time for positions with companies that I would not want to take, or ultimately regret taking.
I think I come to opposite conclusions from the same basis. My time is valuable, so I’d rather go into a first interview blind then taking time to research the position. The first interview is my timeboxed do I want to pursue this evaluation.
I don’t think the secrecy has any correlation with how good the position is. Recruiters are just guarding their commission. I think that’s a good reason not to work with a recruiter (distrustful people tend not to be trustworthy), I’m not seeing the correlation there though.
I’ve heard about glassdoor, but I’ve never been to the site. I should probably check it out.
I have had the opportunity to conduct several phone interviews in the last few weeks with my lead worker. On a few of them, we both felt that the person was using the internet to search for answers: indicative of 5-10 second pauses, then it sounded like they were reading from a textbook. One time, a candidate obviously didn’t understand the question as stated, and went off on tangent that took a couple of minutes to complete. For the most part, we stick to the questions unless the candidate asks for clarification.
This is key — if you don’t understand something, or don’t think you heard it right, ask for clarification. There was one candidate that did so, and it gave me a warm fuzzy feeling to know that he was actually listening and comprehending.
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Very good idea! I want a business card. I don’t really need one, but I just think it would be cool. I was going to go for the design used by Christian Bale’s character in American Psycho (in the colour ‘bone’) but I might have to get a bit more creative, now that LEGO have upped the game…