How to Prepare for a Phone Interview

Phone interviews can be incredibly tricky to navigate. As with all interviews, you have no idea what’s going to be asked of you, but also, because you’re not face to face with your interviewer, it can be difficult to put yourself at ease with a friendly rapport and to rely on your facial expressions and demeanour to convey your message. 

With phone interviews you need to be confident, clear and prepared - and we can teach how. Here’s how to prepare for a phone interview.

Research the company 

This might sound simple - but in order to succeed for your phone interview, you’re going to need to really understand the company. What are their recent successes? Have they had any positive press recently? Do you know what team you’ll be fitting into? What is their company ethos? Do they have company values?

Study their ‘about us’ pages, their HR pages and their ‘join us’ pages, which will usually give you a great indicator of which types of people they employ. 

Study the job specification 

The job specification is going to be key to nailing your interview. Print it off and have a look closely at the desirable and essential criteria. It’s a great tip to keep this by your side during your actual phone interview so you can make sure that you’re referencing specific essential criteria in your personal anecdotes.

Tick off the skills that you know you have, and start to think about how you can evidence that you have each of those skills. Make notes alongside each criteria with trigger words so that you can quickly pull your anecdotes when asked.

Understand the person specification 

While your ability to actually do the job is vital - you’re also going to need to demonstrate that you’re a good fit for the company. This is where the person specification is important. They’re telling you exactly what sort of person they’re looking for - and the phone interview is your chance to prove that that’s you. 

Make sure you can demonstrate that you possess the personality traits they’re looking for in your answers. 

Outline your skills

You never know what you’re going to get asked in a phone interview, so it’s important to prepare what you think it is about you that makes you a great candidate - and then you can mould your answers to fit the questions that they’re asking.

Outline the skills that you possess, including any qualifications, awards or commendations, and think of examples that will add context to these skills.

Think about your achievements

As well as specific skills, it’s a great idea to be able to showcase your achievements in a phone interview. These might not always be immediately obvious to you, but it’s the individual achievements within previous job roles that will differentiate you from the other candidates.

For example, did you get promoted within x amount of time at your last company? Did you take the lead on a successful project which resulted in x increase in sales? Did you design a new prototype that became a product? Was it your idea behind the latest marketing campaign? 

Think about what you have individually achieved in your previous work experience and don’t be afraid to shout about it.

Organise your notes 

Highlight absolutely anything you’d like to mention about yourself in your interview. As we previously mentioned, you’re not going to know what questions are going to be asked, which means you might not always get the chance to tell your prospective employers about a specific achievement you’d like to mention.

If you’ve highlighted your notes and separated them so that it’s clear to see, you’ll be able to quickly find your relevant anecdotes for whatever question is asked, will be able to identify keywords to help form your thoughts and you’ll also be able to let them know at the end of the interview about anything specific that you’d like to discuss that might not have naturally come up in your interview.

Follow these steps to ensure a high-quality phone interview that will be stress-free every time.