How to prepare for an HR phone interview
Before we begin, let’s answer the first question that comes to mind — why would you want to prepare for an HR phone interview at all? You could just be yourself and intuitively answer all the questions when you’re asked, right? The answer to that question from my experience is that it’s not enough. Being yourself is indeed crucial, but so is knowing how to connect the dots of your life, and how to effectively communicate and present your knowledge, your choices and values. In this article I would like to share a few tips on how to build your story the right way, and what to expect to be asked about.
The most important thing that I’d like you to take away from this article is: write your story on a piece of paper. Writing has a magical way of helping us to process information. Just as you prepare for a coding interview and you write code on a blank whiteboard or notebook, preparing your story when you write will help you to express your thoughts and give a concrete form to them. But what should you write about, you ask? Get your paper right beside you, we’re about to begin.
First, we’ll begin by writing an introduction of yourself, regardless of your last professional experience: speak about your education, why you chose this profession, your professional interests and every relevant information that you would like to share. Then, after you’ve told about yourself, it’s time to properly introduce your professional experience to the interviewer. You have to assume that you’ll explain things to the interviewer as if he didn’t thoroughly read your CV, and as if he doesn’t remember your experience, expertise, current company or what the company’s product is. For this reason, when talking about a workplace, I suggest to use The Funnel System.
The Funnel System
Begin by explaining briefly about the company’s product, market and scale. Continue by talking about the team: what’s the team’s responsibilities and structure, what’s the interaction of the team with other teams in the company and how many team members are there. Next, talk about how you fit in the team: your role, projects that you were involved with, how your typical day looks like and what were the challenges that you were facing. When working with The Funnel System, you basically start from a high-level perspective of what you did and move to the low-level details of your daily work and challenges.
Some more tips:
Record of employment
Invest a significant time to look at your employment record, and in each and every role use the Funnel System.
“Win” the hard questions
The hard questions in the interview are meant also for you: this is your time to express yourself, to tell the interviewer how you overcame obstacles and what you have learned from them. Yes, this is your time to shine! As part of being prepared, think of your REAL professional weaknesses, strengths, things you want to improve and what you want to achieve in the future.
Be Organized, Concise and Clear
Organize your words and explanations in a time frame. Stay concise and don’t get into irrelevant details, few sentences that explain the idea will have a greater impact on your listener. Read what you have written and see that your explanation is not too long. When you think that you’re ready, read your story out loud (maybe to a friend) and check if you have explained yourself clearly.
