How Do You Sound On The Telephone?

The phone is a critical tool in the job hunt — do you know how you sound on it?

Sure, it's pretty straightforward — you pick it up, punch some numbers in and talk on it. You've been doing it your whole life, so there's nothing special about using it in the job search. Right?

Well, that's not actually the case.

Because how you communicate on the phone — what you say and especially how you say it — becomes the basis for whether or not you make it to the next stage in the interview process. How you use your time on the phone with the HR person, the recruiter or the hiring manager is actually pretty critical.

If you talk on the phone for a living — if you're in sales or corporate communications — a lot of this advice comes as part of your job. But if you're in an area where persuading and communicating over the phone isn't something you've learned professionally, I've collected some of the best-written and most popular articles we've written over the years on the phone interview and included the links at the end of this letter.

In my ten years in the online recruitment industry, here are my own three best bits of advice for making the phone your friend in the job hunt:

For the initial call

Typically, the initial call is a screening call to determine whether or not you have the basics for the job, and whether you have any interest at all in pursuing it. As an introductory interview, the stakes are pretty low, and so long as you're polite and responsive to questions about your background, not too much can go terribly wrong.

But this is a great chance for you to find out more about the job. At this point, the person on the other end of the phone is selling as much as judging, and there is therefore a greater appetite for taking your questions and giving you more information about the job. Use this opportunity to your advantage.

The five questions that I'd suggest you ask during an initial screening?

"What are the three most important things you want the person who takes this job to achieve over the next year?" (We'll come back to why this is important.)

"Tell me what type of person is successful, and what type of person is not successful at your company." (This is a more specific way of asking about company culture.)

"Who had this job last, and why did they leave?" (Or, for new jobs, why is it being created?)

"Are you working on this job on an exclusive or retained basis, or on a contingency basis?" (If the person you are speaking with is an executive recruiter.)

"What's your timeline for making a decision?"

For the phone interview itself

Follow all of the advice below, particularly the first article by Barbara Safani, which is one of the best-written pieces I've seen on the tactics of taking an important job-search phone call.

As for substance, the phone screen is usually not the chance to get a real feel for the company and the job. You'll pick up some more color, but it's unlikely you'll get a "feel in your bones" for what the organization and the position are like.

Most frequently, it's simply a hurdle you'll have to pass to get the next round. Which makes it different and higher stakes than an initial screening call.

If you've determined you're interested in pursuing this opportunity, you'll need to get past this obstacle.

So my best advice for doing just that is to make it easy for them.

If you've asked the "three most important things" question during your initial call or subsequent scheduling call, you already know what they're looking for. It's not hard, and maybe it's a little bit obvious, but you'd be amazed at how often people get distracted into turning a phone interview into a nice social call discussing your hobbies or how the baseball season is going. Don't let that happen to you.

Take the three most important things, have your capabilities to deliver on each of those things well thought out, and stick to those points. If the conversation veers off into the blue yonder, always bring it back to those key issues.

And at the end of your call, repeat those things and your background and abilities in those areas: "Well, Ms. Jones, you mentioned that x, y and z were the three most critical things for this job, and I walked you through how my background A, B and C made me a great fit to do just that successfully. Is there anything I've overlooked, or do you agree?"

This is the best way to get a very accurate read on how well you came across on the phone, and what the hiring manager thinks about your potential fit for the role at the end of the call.

Buy a mirror

I've mentioned this many times over the years: we all know that how we feel shows up in our facial expressions. Feeling glum and you'll be frowning; feeling great and you're smiling.

But did you know that it works the other way too?

Psychological research has shown that if you're smiling, even for as little as five minutes, it actually changes the way you feel.

And how you feel determines how your voice sounds on the phone. You can tell when your friends are down, or exuberant — and, no surprise, so can recruiters and hiring managers on the other end of the phone.

So what I want you to do is to feel great when you're making job hunt phone calls.

One way to do that is to actually — you know, always, 100% of the time — feel really, really great.

But that's not realistic.

The other way is to find a little trick that can help you feel great and be smiling while you're on the phone.

So I'd recommend having a little mirror on your desk whenever you're making phone calls. When we look in a mirror, we see one of our favorite people in the world, and, yes, we tend to smile. And that smiling does actually change the way you feel. It might sound trite or goofy, but if you really try it, you'll find that it actually makes a difference in your mental attitude, your facial expression, and, most importantly, how your voice sounds to the person on the other end of the phone.

The best articles from our News & Advice section

I've pulled together the five articles below from our enormous job hunt advice section. We've got some great stuff for your job search in there, and the topic of phone interviews is no exception. As mentioned, I think this first article by Barbara Safani is really outstanding:

10 Tips for Mastering the Phone Interview

Phone interviews are becoming more and more common — learn how to ace yours.

How to Handle a Phone Interview

How to interview in different situations ranging from Web videoconferences to lunch with an acquaintance and even the dreaded phone interview.

The Dreaded Phone Interview

Leveling the playing field to be sure you put your best foot forward.

Top 6 Job-Search Gaffes and Goofs

The hiring manager may not explicitly give you feedback telling you these factors are why you lost the job — but these pet peeves may be the factors that made the hiring managers look elsewhere.

Speak Successfully

The hiring manager may not explicitly give you feedback telling you these factors are why you lost the job — but these pet peeves may be the factors that made the hiring managers look elsewhere.

OK, everybody, hope you have a smiling and dialing kind of week — you know I'll be rooting for you!

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From May 2010