There is always plenty of dialogue and debate on LinkedIn about interviews (and people not performing in interviews) and people posting things about interviews that didn’t go well.
One of the most common things that I see is that people don’t seem to understand the purpose of the initial phone screen call.
As with everything on LinkedIn and online, everybody has an opinion. This is my method for conducting a phone screen, and hopefully, you’ll find something useful in it.
Let’s think first about the purpose of a phone screen call – it’s really to qualify the candidate’s ability to be employed. When I say “qualify”, I’m talking about 5 specific things.
1. Do their salary expectations fit your budget?
2. Do they have work rights in whatever country you operate in?
3. What is their notice period, and does it fit your time frame?
4. Are they looking for full-time or part-time, and a contract or employment relationship?
5. Location and in the post-COVID world, it’s worthwhile checking if people are looking for remote, hybrid, or on-site jobs.
These might seem very simplistic and obvious things to check for, but these are the things that, in my experience, most hiring outcomes fall down on. These are the very basic details.
But hiring is about details, and when those details are wrong or overlooked, the whole process derails. People feel like their time’s been wasted, people get cranky, and the whole thing feels like amateur hour.
Details that get overlooked at this stage will come back to bite you later on.
It’s worth noting that if your role requires certain qualifications as must-have requirements (e.g.A medical degree, A License to practice Law), then you should get these questions out of the way early.
Remember, this is about efficiency and respecting the process for both you and the candidate.
I’ve lost count of the number of times I’ve heard of candidates going to a final round of interviews and then asking what the daily contract rate is, only to be surprised when they find out that it’s a permanent role where they’d have to be an employee.
They’re disappointed, the hiring team gets infuriated because they potentially passed over other candidates for this one or other candidates have pulled out of the process because the team has been pursuing this candidate, and now they have to start all over again.
These are basics that can be avoided if we clarify and qualify these things upfront.
I think that a lot of people find some of these things, especially talking about money, a bit awkward and uncomfortable to discuss. So they put it off to the last minute or later in the process. And that’s when they potentially come unstuck.
You need to have these conversations early in the process to save any embarrassment or confusion later on.
A really simple way to have this conversation and get this part out of the way early on in the conversation is just to frame it with a bit of humour. The reason you should make this early on in the phone screen conversation is that if one of these 5 things is a deal breaker for you, you’re not spending half an hour on a call with a candidate that isn’t going to go anywhere.
Efficient and respectful.
So the way I frame this pretty much all the time is this:
“Hey there {NAME}, thank you so much for joining the call; it’s an absolute pleasure to meet you. There’s a bit of stuff to go through today. We’ve got half an hour booked in for this call, and I’m really keen to learn all about you and your background and what you’re looking for. Obviously, I’ll tell you a lot more about the company and the role.
This is a conversation, not an interrogation, so feel free to jump in at any time with your questions. Does that all sound relatively sensible to you?
Great, before we start, do you mind if we just jump into the really boring stuff and just get that out of the way first?”
I’ve never had anyone say no. Ever.
I then ask them about work rights, and I might just say, “Hey, can I just confirm that you have work rights here? What’s your current status? Are you a citizen or your permanent resident?” This isn’t a yes or no question, it’s a A or B question.
“Great, thanks. At some stage, we’ll need to sight your proof of residence (or Visa), so that when we get audited, we can prove that all our staff are legally employed”
I then confirm that they’re looking for a permanent full-time role. (Obviously, if that’s what the role is)
Now that we’re into a bit of conversation and the dialogue’s flowing, it just makes it a little bit more comfortable to ask about money rather than asking about money right at the beginning.
So I usually ask, “You seem really smart. In my experience, smart people are very expensive. Tell me, how many millions of dollars do we need to pay you for the pleasure of your company?”
99% of people that I ask this question of laugh and think it’s funny. The whole point is that making this conversation more difficult than it has to be is just pointless. Humour is a great leveller and a humaniser. So if you can use humour in your conversation, it’ll help you get the conversation going where it needs to go.
From here, the candidate will usually say something like, “Oh, you want to know how much, what my salary expectations are?” And I’ll say, “Yeah, sure.” And they might ask me what the budget for the role is, and I’ll just tell them.
This doesn’t have to be a “whoever speaks first loses” type scenario. It’s just a conversation. You already have a budget for the role, so I might say, “We’re paying anywhere between $100k and $120k for the role.” The candidate might say, “I’m looking for $120,” Which means you’re in the ballpark.
If they say they want $150k, I’ll say something like, “I’m glad we talked about this first, our budget isn’t going to stretch that far. I’d hate to waste both of our time. I’m happy to proceed on the understanding that we’re only going to be paying £120 at the top end, but I’ll understand if that’s out of your range”
And then it’s up to them what they choose to do. If they choose not to proceed, you’ve only wasted 5 minutes. They’ll appreciate the honesty, they’ll appreciate not having their time wasted. And you know what? If another role comes up, you’ve probably got someone you can talk to.
From here, assuming that these deal-breaker questions match your expectations and requirements in the role, you’re free to get into the rest of the conversation.
And that might look like me saying, “I sent you the PD the other day and you’ve had a chance to review it, why don’t you, in your own words, describe what you think the role is all about? I just want to make sure that we’re both on the same page.”
There are a few reasons for this:
- It confirms that they understand what the role is.
- It gives me a chance to start assessing how well they communicate in a business context.
- It gives them a chance to flag parts of the role that they have direct experience with and any areas that they don’t and that are worth exploring further.
- It gets the conversation moving and lets them feel as if they’re in the conversation, rather than me just hitting them up with question after question
Making interviews into conversations rather than interrogations, I think, is a real art, and I think it’s something that we don’t spend enough time thinking about.
All candidates perform better when interviews are conversational rather than interrogations.
So, hopefully, the candidate describes what they think the role is. If there are parts that they’ve missed, I’ll tell them. If their perception of the role is vastly different from our requirements, again, I’ll let them know and clarify that and make sure they’re comfortable proceeding from there.
This whole part can take literally 5-10 minutes. I’ve done this in 5 minutes, it’s really easy to do, but I do think it comes with practice
From there, I’ll give the candidate an overview of the business, some background and context that they should know, and talk about the current status of the business. If we have a major milestone, if that milestone is raising a Series A or finding product-market fit, whatever it is, I’ll let the candidate know, and we’ll talk through what that looks like and how that is impacting the role and how the role helps us to achieve that mission.
This then just really turns into a conversation. I might say something like, “What I really liked on your resume was your experience at XYZ company in ABC role. How do you think that experience would inform and help you succeed in this role?”
This then becomes conversational, and hopefully we wrap up by the 30-45 minute mark (or however long you’ve set aside). Hopefully, you’re both coming away from this conversation thinking that this conversation has legs and has the potential to go somewhere.
Generally, I’ll record the call and ask for permission to record the call so I can make notes and make some assessments later on.
I can get through half a dozen of these types of calls in a day, in and amongst all the other things that I need to do. Which means that you can get through a good volume of roles in a short space of time. But I do think you need to go into these conversations well-prepared and have a routine that you use.
I’ve been running this kind of routine probably for about 10 years now. This is just how I do it, and it kind of works every time. It’s almost like muscle memory now.
I hope you’ve found this helpful.
If you have any questions or need further clarification, please don’t hesitate to reach out. I’m here to help with anything you might need!
To be clear, I recruit in the tech space in Melbourne, Australia. Wherever you are recruiting, you should obviously be aware of any legal requirements that may or may not impact your ability to ask open questions about salaries and work rights and that sort of thing.
I’m not an expert on hiring in every country outside of Australia, so if you do have some local restrictions on that, then you should obviously pay attention to those. This is simply my process and how I work, and hopefully, there might be something in it that’s useful for you.
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