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Employers use telephone screening as an inexpensive means of identifying and recruiting good candidates for employment. Although they lack the immediacy of conventional (face-to-face) interviews, telephone interviews offer offsetting advantages and many employers use them to augment their campus recruiting programs.

Historically, recruiters have preferred face-to-face interviews to screen job candidates in such venues as campus interview visits and job fairs (including the ACS Employment Clearing Houses). These interviews serve three purposes: to verify facts, to screen in desirable candidates, and to screen out inappropriate ones. It is also an opportunity for the candidate to determine whether he or she is interested in proceeding to a site interview. The major advantage is that, besides listening to one another, the recruiter and candidate can observe one another. Gestures, expressions, and body language add energy and communicate much that words alone do not convey, giving those involved better insights for making appropriate judgments.

Although face-to-face interviews are generally preferred, they can be expensive to arrange. The recruiter - and sometimes the candidate - may incur significant costs in travel expenses and time. When a schedule is packed with interviews, the unit cost of an interview may be low enough to make an interview trip an appealing option. Even so, recruiters and candidates must then guard against "interview fatigue." In a full schedule of interviews, a 9 a.m. and a 2:30 p.m. interview can be rather different experiences for recruiters and candidates alike. In addition, simply being interviewed in an unfamiliar place can make even highly talented candidates feel awkward and uncomfortable, adding to their stress.

Videoconferencing has been promoted as an alternative to face-to-face interviews. Its major benefits are savings of time and money but the practice has its flaws: Being on television makes many people ill at ease and thus reluctant to speak openly; the connection may not be adequate; having more than one interviewer participate may affect the quality of the interview; the image quality may not be very good; and not all schools have this capability. In comparison, by staffing a table at a campus career fair, students will just stop by to talk with you and you might find a prospective hire or two among them that you wouldn't find by videoconferencing.

More and more employers are using telephone interviews for their initial screening of candidates. Job candidates should be prepared for such interviews just as they would for an interview in person. In other words, they should:

• Be ready to interpret and "sell" every achievement noted on their resumes.
• Have available a clear, appealing outline of their research, if they are graduate students or practicing scientists.
• Offer a well-rehearsed presentation of their work and academic achievements.
• Understand their goals, abilities, skills, and developmental needs, and their expectations of an employer.

A telephone interview can be a relaxed and effective experience. In some ways, it can be more comfortable and natural than a face-to-face interview, especially if you have access to a speaker telephone to free your hands for note taking. In the comfort of their rooms, candidates can focus on communicating without having to worry about an interviewer "reading their appearance." At the same time, you may openly follow a script, take notes, or even compose a draft interview report on a laptop computer during the interview. However, since both of you must rely on a single medium for making a positive impact, you should arrange your surroundings to assure privacy without distractions and focus on listening attentively.

Telephone interviews have other advantages. Interviewers and candidates can schedule the interview based on their mutual convenience - conducting only morning interviews, for example, if that is their best time. They can also avoid back-to-back interviews, and concentrate more closely on each interview, increasing likelihood of success. While many companies consider campus recruiting as a main source of talent, they recognize telephone interviews as an appropriate tool to link candidates with job openings that occur around the year.

A telephone-screening interview operates as follows:

Set the stage. Contact the candidate by e-mail or telephone to explain the job opening, elicit the candidate's interest, and schedule a screening interview to occur within the next three business days. Telephone interviews for new B.S. candidates typically last 25-30 minutes and 40-50 minutes for new PhDs or experienced professionals. Ask the candidate to send by fax or e-mail useful documents, such as a current resume and research summaries. Invite the candidate to explore the employer's web page for background information.

Conduct the interview. A good interviewer starts on time, stays on time, and ends on time. Since you and the candidate have already met once by telephone, the usual small talk to get an interview rolling may be kept brief. Begin by taking a moment to explain the interview agenda to the candidate. This key step enables you to regulate the process and assure the candidate that no surprises are intended.

The outline of the interview. Use the candidate's resume to formulate specific lines of questions, and take notes during the interview to document key information. Research by the National Association of Colleges and Employers and by Dr. William Swan, a leader in interviewer training, advises probing a candidate's background in the following order:

1. Work experience. For a new graduate, spend about 25 percent of the time on this topic; for an experienced candidate, up to 50 percent. The work history may consist of summer and part-time jobs dating back to high school. Start at the beginning but spend most of the time exploring recent experience. Try to learn what the candidate actually accomplished, liked or disliked, and learned in each job. If teamwork was involved, determine the candidate's role. How were obstacles overcome? Your goal is to grasp the candidate's various talents, growth in experience, productivity, interests, and transferable skills. Since undergraduate and graduate research, as well as cooperative assignments, are part of education, many recruiters include those topics as part of the discussion about education.

2. Education. For a new graduate, devote 30-35 percent of the time to education; for an experienced candidate, perhaps 20-25 percent. Start with college, including how the candidate selected his or her institution and major. Explore areas of academic achievement, interest, and challenge. Include extra-curricular activities. If the candidate is a new Ph.D. or a postdoctoral scientist, request a fifteen-minute review of graduate (and postdoctoral) research. This is a challenge but can go smoothly if the candidate truly owns the research. Be politely firm about limiting the presentation's time. This is an opportunity to measure the candidate's output, creativity, independence, drive, maturity, and, sometimes, the direct applicability of the work to a current job opening.

3. Outside activities. Productive people have scant free time. How they spend it can reveal their deep-seated values. These may include desire for advancement, autonomy, balanced life, challenge, security, and service to some important goal. An interviewer who devotes 10 percent of the time to explore outside activities and their meaning to the candidate can often gauge how the candidate's values are aligned with the employer's.

4. Self-assessment. Now test your impressions of the candidate. Ask the candidate to state three leading strengths and, for each, give an example of how that strength led to a success. As you listen, check what you hear against your impressions. Next, ask what specifically the candidate is doing for self-improvement, to advance to a higher level of performance. Investing 8-10 percent of the interview this way can reveal much about the candidate's maturity and ambition. Conclude your part of the interview by asking if the candidate wants to bring up anything else. If so, cover it quickly. Then ask, as your last question, what the candidate wants to do next in a job and what he or she wants from it. Now invite the candidate to present questions to you.

5. Candidate's questions. Candidates want jobs where they can succeed and employers where they can be happy and fulfill their goals. Their questions are important to them. Allot 10-15 percent of the time to address them. If, at this point, you are trying to attract the candidate, give truthful and enthusiastic answers to persuade him or her to come for a site interview. Otherwise, give truthful but matter-of-fact answers. Every candidate deserves respect and should feel treated fairly. If they don't work for you, they will likely work for a supplier, customer, or competitor. You want their good will, no matter what.

6. Conclusion. Briefly explain what comes next in the review process and when to expect a reply. Thank them for investing their time with you, then hang up. Finally, complete your interview report while the information and impressions are fresh.

The telephone interview is an invaluable tool to the recruitment process. The primary advantage of telephone interviewing is cost-effectiveness: you can screen a wide pool of candidates and select the right few to invite back for a site interview. Another advantage is timeliness, when you are trying to fill immediate openings. While the telephone interview lacks the benefits of seeing candidates in person and assessing them visually, by listening carefully you can still make confident predictions of future performance from your evaluations.

James D. Burke is formerly Manager of Technical Recruiting and University Relations for Rohm & Hass Company. Jim has more than 20 years of experience in recruiting and career development programs. Jim is an active ACS Career Consultant and is presently on the ACS Board of Directors.

Related Reading: Seven Steps to Better Phone Screening of Job Candidates
A thoughtful, thorough telephone screening process can dramatically reduce the valuable time you spend selecting top candidates--prior to conducting in-person interviews. Here are seven steps that can help you develop a telephone screening process that will save you time, and quickly and effectively get you to face-to-face interviews with the best applicants.
(Used with permission; Copyright 2001 Inc.com LLC)

The phone screen is an opportunity to learn more about a candidate than you can from his or her resume. You can determine, for example, whether the candidate is worth bringing in for a face-to-face interview. Learn how to get the most out of a phone screen and how to avoid five common phone-screen interview mistakes, courtesy of WetFeet.com.