Phone Screening

Next important step in hiring a good candidate is phone screening, this is the opportunity to know the candidate and deturmine whethere its worth to call him/her for face to face interview.

While phone screening we need to take care of:

Balance The Talk: Dont let the candidate drive the interview, many times the candidate keeps talking and interviewes keeps looking at the resume. Try to get specific answers you expect
Skills probing: If candiate got specific skills (very limited) then it would be unfair to probe broad range of skills instead these cases should be decided at the time of resume shortlisting.
Judgement: dont judge too early you might get biased to your early judgement which is not good for hiring the right candidate.
Communication: Be patient to people who speaks English as second language, phone communication may not give you the fair idea abot communication and many job positions dosenot requre fluent english except customer facing positions.
Time: Call on time, dont miss the call, good candidates are busy in their daily schedule and after the interview they might want to go back to work.
Agenda: keep good mixure of introducing the requirment, company then questions and reserve some time for candidate if he/she got questions.
Discussion: Keep focus on fundamentals if fundamentals are clear he can pickup early, make good mixure of technical and behavioural questions to know the candidate
Misc: Keep writting notes during the discussion, be aware of othe open positions in your group/company as the candidate might better suit the other position and finally dont end on negative note.

Happy Hiring!