How to Conduct a Phone Screen Interview
Read all of the steps of phone screening and sample interview questions
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The recruitment process is a complex machine. However, phone screening is a major component. Neglecting it will lead to an inefficient and horribly slow recruitment effort that misses the top talent. That’s why as a recruiter, you need to understand how to conduct a phone screen interview.
Strong phone screening simplifies the whole process, streamlining the most time-consuming parts of recruitment.
So, let’s take a look at the basic steps of phone screening that talent acquisition specialists must know.
Recruitment goes beyond just your phone screen interview questions. You’re building an entire system to efficiently source, screen and hire quality candidates. That takes strategy and the right tools. Here’s what to know as a recruiter.
As a recruiter, you already know that time is a vital resource. What you might not know is that the average time-to-hire across industries is approximately 42 days, according to Zippia. Each day costs an average of $98 which equates to well over $4,000 per hire. So, long hiring times equal greater costs and ultimately a lower ROI on recruitment.
Beyond costs, a slow time-to-hire means you’re missing out on the best talent. The modern candidate expects a communicative employer, and a slow recruitment process contradicts that expectation. Some candidates even translate their experience in the hiring process to what they expect of the actual role. Consequently, they’re more likely to deny an offer the longer it takes. Worse yet, the most qualified candidates are only on the market for 10 days before committing to a new position.
That’s why it’s so important to cut wasted time wherever possible. The interview process is a natural place to start. According to Yello, interviewing constitutes three-quarters of the time spent on recruitment. As we briefly mentioned before, scheduling interviews takes 30 minutes to 2 hours per candidate. That means a recruiter who wants to schedule and screen at least 5 candidates will spend anywhere from 2.5 hours to 10 hours.
Thankfully, there are incredible tools today to help you eliminate interview scheduling almost entirely. That’s right, you can get those 10 hours back to focus on what really matters rather than wasting time on clerical work and scheduling.
Virtual interviews are excellent for eliminating scheduling so you can get straight to screening. Simply record your end of the interview, and send it out to your selected candidates. This allows recruiters to interview candidates 24/7 without ever having to work around someone else’s schedule. However, this method is distinct from live interviews. Phone screening interview questions must be carefully selected and free of ambiguity.
Here are some virtual interview questions to consider to help you get started.
This list is by no means exhaustive. Just like any other phone screening questions, virtual interviews can be tailored to your company and industry. The only caveat is that it should be to the point. A long and convoluted question can leave room for doubt in a format where a candidate would normally ask for clarification but can’t. As such, take particular care when designing your own screening questions.
Since virtual interviews drastically cut the time-to-hire, and allow recruiters to quickly screen more candidates, they’re naturally the best solution for high-volume recruitment.
Hiring for high-volume roles is a remarkably daunting task. Whereas hiring for a single role may mean screening up to 250 candidates, high-volume recruitment can receive hundreds of applications a day. If you were to use the traditional approach and schedule individual interviews manually, that would represent thousands of hours of work better spent actually screening candidates. This is where an asynchronous interview shines.
The asynchronous interview process starts by designing the interview itself. The recruiter simply records a single interview. This will be distributed to potentially hundreds of candidates. The candidates will in turn respond at a time of their convenience. There’s no specific window to aim for, no tedious scheduling.
Once the candidate has recorded their end of the interview, it’s returned to the recruiter. The recruiter can focus on other tasks while screening responses as they come in. With Qualifi’s on-demand phone interviews, recruiters can even listen to these responses as one would a podcast. This saves additional time, mitigates bias, and allows recruiters to attend to additional tasks while screening.
And it’s as simple as that. Recruiters no longer have to waste time scheduling candidates that ghost their interviews or juggling busy schedules. After they’ve recorded the interview, they can be screening candidates in 24 hours or less. That ultimately shaves several days off the time-to-hire.
For more on how on-demand interviews can save screening time, check out how Qualifi customer KHR Solutions cut their applicant screening time by 83%.
