I have been put in charge of reviewing resumes and performing the phone interviews for the people who have applied for the customer service position with my company. However, I wasn’t given much in the way of instruction as to how to handle the whole phone interview process. My boss said I could ask them whatever I want because it is really just a check to see how people sound over the phone and see how well they communicate (it is a customer service position so this is important).
I have never done this before and I didn’t even have a phone interview of my own before I was hired (my boss said my resume was teh awesome and she didn’t feel the need to go through that first step with me) so I have no idea what to ask people. I want to do an excellent job and make my boss feel like she was right in trusting me with this process so I come to you, dopers, in hope that you can assist me. Have you ever performed a phone interview? What did you ask people? What are some things you have been asked in phone interviews for companies you have applied with in the past?
Never been the interviewer, have been the interviewee:
Questions I’ve been asked:
Tell me about yourself (Hate this question with a passion. Ask me something more specific, with some meat).
Are you aware that this position is in California and housing prices are insane? (Yes)
What’s the weather like?/ Does the color Orange have significance to you? (Getting to know you/chatty questions–orange was significant because of Syracuse University).
Otherwise, similar questions to what I would expect to be asked in an in-person interview. It’s ok to ask the same questions over the phone and in-person, especially if they are good general-purpose questions and not of the ilk of “How many ping-pong balls can fit in a 747?”
I’ve been explicitely assured that everyone was being asked the same questions, and I think that’s overkill–especially when I’ve been asked very stilted, generic questions. I mean, I could kinda tell that the question was composed by committee. But I don’t think you need to personalize your questions a whole lot either.
I’d start with a simple list of questions “why are you interested in this position? Tell me about a good customer service experience you’ve had. Tell me about a bad customer service experience you’ve had. . . .” and move from there. Try to have ~15 minutes or so of questions–maybe a little less, but not a lot less. I mean, if you make arrangements that we will have a phone interview at 9 am on Friday, and I arrange my whole day around it, I’ll be a little put out if we don’t talk for a while. But if this is mostly a screening thing, you don’t have to dedicate a lot of time and energy to talking with me or constructing questions, just enough so I don’t feel like you are wasting my time.
I’ve done quite a few on the interviewer side. The purpose of the phone interview, for us, is to screen candidates before asking them in for an interview, which can get expensive since they might be far away.
Ask about anything interesting on their resume, ask about their experience, ask why they want that kind of a job. When helping my kids with their resumes I advise them to include something that will spark a question. If there is something like that, use it. Be prepared with your questions ahead of time, be open ended, asking stuff that should elicit more than a yes or no answer, and try to throw them for a loop to see how they handle a surprise over the phone. Find a list of common, trite questions (what is your biggest weakness) and don’t ask them.
Yes, that’s what I was going to ask–is this a first cut set of interviews, after which you will bring a handful of people in? You may have a set of questions to rule out people who won’t fit for salary or schedule reasons or other dealbreakers.
As far as other questions, I’d go with
What is about customer service and this job in particular that interest you?
Describe your techniques for handling difficult customers, with an example.
You’d be wise to ask your boss what the rest of the interview process entails. That way you can use everybody’s time wisely by asking different questions.
My preference would be to have the in-person interview include behavioral interview questions, like “Tell me about a time you had to work with an upset customer” and “Tell me about a time you had to prioritize multiple projects.” That’s also the place for probing questions about why they left a prior job.
Those questions really benefit from seeing the interviewee’s facial expression and body language while they answer.
For a phone interview, you can ask more general questions, like “What interests you about the job?” “What interests you about working for XYZ Company?” Also, clear up anything on the resume that leaves you (or would likely leave your boss) confused about what they meant (are you living in the city now or planning to move here?). And go ahead and give the applicants any information you can about the job. In this economy, I imagine you have a good selection to choose from, so go ahead and mention anything in the process (drug screen, credit check) or about the job (overtime required, on-call schedule) that would cause people to weed themselves out sooner rather than later.
And really do pay attention to how they communicate, quality of phone voice, etc. It sounds like your boss is trusting you to bring in people the company would be happy to have talk with customers, so that’s a valuable contribution right there. For legal reasons, make sure any notes you make about that don’t have any ethnic overtones. Use phrases like “hard to understand” or specific examples of poor grammar.
Ideally everyone you recommend to bring in should be someone you can picture doing the job. Your boss will then use the in person interview to pick the best one.
Yep, this is the first round of questioning to determine who to bring in for a face to face interview.
I’m trying to come up with at least 6-8 good questions but I’m having trouble thinking of stuff that won’t be addressed in a later interview. I know I always hated being asked the same question by different people in a company when I was interviewing and I’d like to avoid that if at all possible. Keep the ideas coming!
My last phone interview was an internal HR prescreen for a position within the same company, and it went something like this:
“Can you tell me what interests you about this position?”
“Tell me a little bit about what you do in your current position that you think relates to the job you’re applying for.”
“What do you like most about your current job?”
“What do you like the least about your current job?”
There were a few other questions, but those were more specific to an internal application (ie. my current salary grade, last performance review results, stuff like that).
I think we’re missing a trick here: going from the OP, this is a position where telephone manner is extremely important and the OP is looking to test that. So the OP should be asking questions about how the candidate puts callers at ease, deals with abusive callers, callers who won’t stop talking, etc., as well as basic telephone manners like how they answer the phone, how quickly they should answer the phone (after 2 rings), at what point they’d ask for a supervisor, and so on.