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How Do You Prepare For Phone Interview?

Many businesses employ preliminary phone interviews with strong paper candidates to gauge whether or not to do in-person, in-depth interviews. A telephone display may be referred to as this. Your conversation partner on this call will likely be a recruiter instead of a potential employer. The success of your job hunt depends on this step. The recruiter may advance you to the next round if everything goes smoothly. So how do you prepare for the phone interview for internships? Lets read on.
How Do You Prepare For Phone Interview?
Interviews via phone calls are very popular and go long back. As you look for an internship and apply to different companies, it's a given that recruiters will call you as a first step. There is also email, but most people have their phones with them all the time and may not check their emails as often. Hence, calls are a great way to reach out to the candidates to gain information about them.
Usually the prelim calls are done to screen you and schedule interviews. Recruiters ask for your availability for the interview, apart from asking some basic details about yourself and your current status.

Understanding the Purpose

Phone interviews are done by employers because they want to get a pulse of shortlisted candidates. They talk to the candidates over phone to get an understanding of their technical and/or communication skills majorly. Candidate CVs speak a lot about their achievements and accolades, but is the candidate actually that equipped? This is one question that propels this method of taking interviews. On the basis of the telephonic conversation with candidates, the hiring panel decides if they should call them for next round of interview.

Phone interviews are also a great way to interview candidates who are not local and reside elsewhere. It's possible at times that the video calls may not work for remote candidates, in such cases, phone calls are the best way to go about it.

Preparation for Phone Interview

How would you get ready for a phone interview? Let’s take a look at some tips below:
1.    Research about the company and go through the job description thoroughly, so you get a good idea of their expectations.
2.    Treat it like any other type of interview. After all, you would be asked questions based your CV. Understand that the same would have happened had it been an in-person interview or a video call. The point here is to not take phone interviews casually.
3.    Keep your phone handy. When you are aware of the time of interview, answer it personally instead of letting someone else take it. Talk professionally, and exchange pleasantries with the interviewers. This is your start at some company, and starting off casually or in a flustered manner, won't help. So, talk confidently and clearly.
4.    Practice beforehand with the help of some traditional questions. Your strengths and weaknesses, about explaining your achievements, about your expertise. When these questions come up, you would be able to answer them easily.
5.    Do not go all desperate and call them beforehand, rest assured they would be calling you at the scheduled timings.
6.    Chose a silent zone in your house that is devoid of any noise or interruptions.
7.    It’s always good to keep your CV and cover letter in front of you for referring it during the interview. Pay attention to what the interviewer is asking, hence avoiding any mishaps.
8.    Answer the question openly, instead of beating around the bush and moving away from the actual question.
9.    Answer confidently and thoughtfully, because the goal is to get selected for the next round of interview.

Some Don’ts to take care of:

1.    Do not eat or munch anything while giving the telephonic interview. It doesn’t sound good at all.
2.    Let the interviewer complete his statement, and do not interrupt them in between. Once they are done, you can start speaking.
3.    Don’t appear for a telephonic interview if you have a bad throat. Coughing all the time won’t help the purpose.
4.    Don’t over elaborate the answers. Keep concise yet meaningful approach while answering the questions.

Telephonic interviews are a great way to understand more about the interview panel and what they are expecting from you. While you give the interview, don’t hesitate to ask away any queries that you might have. Keep a pleasant approach towards the panel, with smiling in between so the whole conversation does not get monotonous. As the interview approaches towards its end, try to get an idea about the feedback process as well. That will help you get prepared for the next step easily.

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