7 Common Blunders To Avoid During Phone Interviews

Many at times, people get confused and worried when they receive a sudden phone interview call from a company. It is mainly because phone interviews are often conducted without any prior notification or a predetermined time. Since people can’t keep themselves mentally prepared for the interview all day long, they usually end up making terrible blunders during the 5-10mins phone call.

Phone interviews are conducted for numerous reasons. For instance, a company might conduct a phone interview when they have a huge pile of short-listed CVs and they don’t have enough room, space or time to conduct an interview in the office. It is also possible that the company may be looking for a person for the customer support or telesales job in which one must have good communication or telesales skills.

Regardless, it is important you must make a terrific impression on the listener within that short span of time. Hence, you must be well aware of all the mistakes that people usually make during phone interviews and avoid those blunders as much as you can. Let’s take a look at some critical phone interview mistakes.

1.   Poor Communication

One of the most important skills that a HR specialist seeks in an applicant is his communication skills. Many applicants either have a language problem or they fail to deliver their message properly and clearly. Thus, a majority of the applicants are rejected just because they do not possess strong skills in communication.

If you want to avoid that scenario, then follow the 7C’s of communication when you are giving a phone interview, i.e., you need to be complete, concise, concrete, courteous, correct, coherent and clear while communicating with others.

2.   Lack Of Attention

During phone interviews, it is essential to pay full attention to the speaker (interviewer) because if you space out during the interview even for a single second, you will end up losing the conversation. Therefore, it is highly necessary that you must not let your focus wonder while you are on the phone with the interviewer. Try to ask questions in between the conversation to keep your focus and stick with the call.

3.    Environmental Distractions

Interruptions from the environment will not only distract your attention but it will also make it difficult to listen to the interviewer’s questions properly. To ensure a successful phone interview, it is necessary for you to remove all sorts of things that might distract you during the interview. You may also go to a different room where you can focus on the interview properly and give quick responses to every question asked by the interviewer.

4.    Bad Phone Connection

Before you get an interview call, make sure that you are using a reliable phone line. HR managers are quite busy people and they have lots of interviews to conduct. Once the call is dropped, they might not even bother to call you back because of lack of time. Therefore, make sure that you are at a place where your phone receives complete signals.

5.    Lack Of Preparation

Once you drop your CV in an organization, you must keep yourself fully prepared for the interview call. You must possess entire information regarding the company as well as the job description, roles and responsibilities beforehand. The best way to find out the most authentic information about the company is to talk to someone who works in that company or at least knows about it. It is not essential that firms always inform you before they conduct interviews. So, be mentally prepared to receive a sudden call from the HR manager.

6.    Useless Discussion

Don’t be so eager to tell about your hobbies or irrelevant job experience, as it will not only show your lack of attention to respond to the right question, but it will also create a negative impact on the interviewer. As said earlier, you should observe the 7C’s of communication during the interview, especially the 2nd C conciseness.

7.   Continuous Mumbling

Avoid mumbling as it will make a bad impression on the interviewer. If you are stuck somewhere, it is better to pause for a second or two and then answer instead of mumbling (like Aaa.., Umm).

About Author: – Anissa Lee is an author and dissertation writer at mighty dissertations. Being an author she loves to write blogs which benefits the students and the reader.