Common Phone Interview Questions

You show up for that blind date, and within an hour your date asks, “so you want to get married?”

Country songs glorify fast love and love at first conversation, but the way of wisdom encourages time and intentionality in two people deciding to dive into a relationship. 

Certainly, commitment can drag on too long at times, but more often than not, having a solid boundary of time for a relationship to root and grow will give the runway it needs for longevity.  

As you begin the process of finding potential team members to hire into your business, it is necessary to have times of coordinated conversation.  As important is to make time for casual, interactive, soft-skill revealing conversation.

Because we are usually desperate to find good people, we tend to make the initial phone interview a catch all for everything we need to learn from the new employee candidate. 

In reality, the initial phone call should be just that, an initial phone call to help us get a feel for the person on the other end of the line. 

It is meant to be casual, free-flowing, meandering, and insightful.  

We are asked continually, “what questions should I ask?”

Our response, “what questions would you NORMALLY ask anyone the first time you met them on the phone?”

Where are you from?

Tell me more about that…

What is your background?

Tell me more about that…

How did you hear about us?

Tell me more about that…

What other work have you done in the past? Where?  What did you like about it or not like about it?

Tell me more about that…

What are the things that you most like to do in life?

Tell me more about that…

What are the things that you don’t like to do in life?

Tell me more about that…

Tell me more about that…

Obviously, you may not ask questions that are inappropriate (age, race, gender, relationship status, etc.)  Again, would you ask those in a first phone call with a new acquaintance?  Probably not.

The opening phone call should be used as a simple get-to-know-you.  

You want to know if they have done their homework on you.  You want to know if they can hold their own in a conversation and think on their feet.  You want to know how they can respond to open-ended, general questions.

You want to know enough so you can answer this question for yourself…

“Based on what role we are looking to fill, is this someone I would want to continue to walk through our process?”

The initial phone call is simply a very broad filter to determine if you are ready to invest the serious time of the rest of the lengthy hiring process.  

I can hear some of you now, “but we are just looking for someone with a pulse to come and show up for work, we don’t need to take them through this entire process.”

Whatever commitment you put into this process becomes the ceiling of commitment that you will likely get back from whoever you hire.  If your ceiling of effort is a one (this is a made-up scale), then do not expect the level of commitment of your new hire to be any higher than a one.

Your commitment will help determine their commitment.

Most of us need a commitment level much higher than a one if we are going to collectively go after and achieve the mission that we have for our business.

Consistently, I hear frustration from employers who went too fast and hired the wrong person.  

Rarely do I hear regret from an employer who makes the time for extended, intentional conversation.