7 Ways to Prescreen Your Next Hire on the Phone

Anybody can look good on paper, but can they walk their talk?

This resume just rocketed to the top of the pile. There is a checkmark next to every keyword. You almost have to wonder if this person is too good to be true. There is only one way to find out, and that is to arrange a phone call or video conference.

Prescreening job candidates can save you time and money. Resume-writing services will inject awesomeness into just about anybody, but it is easy, and necessary, to get a glimpse of the real person before you invest in the next step. Here are 7 tips on how to see if a prospect is worth that investment.

1. Do not wing it

Make notes all over that resume. Create a list of questions you want to explore, and then structure them in terms of need-to-know. This is important if you tend to get sidetracked.

You are not the only one being scrutinized during a phone prescreen. The prospect will draw conclusions, too. Is one of them that you do not respect their time? Know what you are looking for. It may be a process of discovery, but you are not spelunking.

2. Preselect your questions and stick to them

You already have a clear picture of the candidate who will be best for this position. The questions you select should have only one objective, and that is to help you determine if this prospect fits the picture.

Avoid generic questions like, "How do you see your career 10 years from now?" Do you even have an answer for that one? Choose actionable questions that are applicable and produce insight. Keep those questions about what a candidate can do for your company now based on examples of their actions in the past.

3. Manage expectations

Effective interviewers succeed in getting the information they need by setting the stage. They explain how they will conduct the interview and conclude with what they want to get out of it.

Video calls are one of the most effective ways to do this. The candidate can see you, and vice versa. You are able to assess their understanding and receptivity to the process you outline.

This keeps you focused, as well. A video call removes the temptation to sneak a look at an incoming email message, or anything else that can take your mind off the task at hand.

4. Keep your tone in check

The days are gone when a company can act as if they hold all the cards because they are the ones with a job opportunity, if those days ever existed at all. A good candidate knows their value. You would not have scheduled a prescreen call unless you saw that, too.

Effective interviewers make their subjects feel welcome and appreciated. It puts them at ease and facilitates communication.

We all tend to accelerate our talking speed when we feel passionate about a subject. Watch for this as you go through the prescreen call. Keep your cadence at a casual speed. It helps to maintain the atmosphere you want, so you can search for the cues you need.

5. Start off by telling them about yourself

Have you ever participated in a hiring prescreen call, as the candidate, and wondered why the interviewer kicked it off with a "let me tell you about myself" moment? They were not making it all about them. In fact, they did it to make it all about you.

The underlying objective is to help the candidate by providing an example of presenting the information you want to get from them. A candidate cannot read your mind, so you have to manage the process by example.

6. Make it conversational

The focus is on your candidate. They should do most of the talking. Successful interviewers understand the importance of facilitation. They do it 3 ways:

• Direct the flow
• Keep the focus
• Maintain the tempo

If your candidate starts to ramble or moves off-topic, make a comfortable interjection and tell them you get what they are trying to say, and then move on to the next topic. There is an art to conversation. Keep things on track.

That means watching out for remaining time. You can help a prescreen candidate assemble and reschedule their thoughts or responses by managing the time in a conversational way.

• Let them know when you have reached the halfway point.
• Give them a heads-up when there are only a few minutes left.
• Tell them how many questions you have left.

7. They have got questions, too

You are missing a crucial opportunity for insight if you do not give a candidate the ability to ask questions, as many questions as you do, or even more. Not to mention that it is impolite. The key here is watching for the questions you want to hear the candidate ask.

Questions they bring up provide an understanding of their concerns and priorities:

• Do those match the picture you have outlined for this position?
• Are they mainly about procedures and timing?
• Or, are they about your company's culture?

Questions give you insight on what motivates them. Are there right or wrong questions? That decision is up to you. There should definitely be questions, though. You want to know they are curious and interested in your company and the job.

Clear communication wins the call

Make your own conclusion if a prescreening candidate chooses to conduct the call while they are at a coffee shop or driving through a tunnel. But be fair and make allowances for their inability to arrange a private environment based on where they are on a career path.

It is a different story for you as the interviewer. You set this up. And ideally, it is a video call so you can benefit from all the visual cues of the interview. A dropped call or choppy audio in the middle of a key answer is the kind of distraction you can avoid. A cloud business phone system that runs on a 99.999% uptime reliability network keeps your prescreen calls crisp from the first hello to the final question.

Let your phone system handle the busywork

A high-volume hiring season means a flood of inbound calls, voicemails, and scheduling back-and-forth. The CallSprout AI Voice Agent can answer candidate calls, transcribe the conversation so you have a searchable record of every screen, and route the right callers to the right people on your team. That frees up your day for the prescreen calls that actually matter, and it means a promising candidate never lands in a dead-end voicemail box.

When you are ready to put a sharper phone process behind your hiring, book a demo and see how CallSprout can move your screening and hiring efforts to the next level.