The amount of infrastructure sitting between you and your next gig is impressive.
Ironically, this infrastructure was purchased and configured to get you as close to this job as quickly as possible, but it doesnât. Corporate job sites are usually outsourced affairs, because HR departments traditionally have neither the budgets nor the expertise to build the system theyâd actually use. They shouldnât; itâs not the core competency.
With half-baked solutions manned by contract recruiters, itâs almost a miracle when your phone rings or an email shows up with a recruiter wanting to set up a phone screen. Someone, somewhere in the organization has successfully mapped you to an open position. This is a really big deal because, in my experience, the chance that youâll get this job has improved logarithmically. Itâs not 50/50, but itâs vastly better than when you were a random resumé sitting on a desk.
Thereâs a sense of relief when you have an actual conversation with a human being, and as soon as you hang up the phone with the recruiter, youâre going to call your best friend and say, âHey, I got a interview with The Company!â
No, you didnât. You got a phone screen, and a phone screen has little to do with an interview. While your situation isnât as tenuous as the 30 seconds you have to make an impression with your resumé, youâre still not in the building, and nothing real is happening until youâre in the building.
Hereâs the precise mental process I use as I walk through the phone screen, but before I do that, youâve got homework.
Before you even talk to me, youâre on a fact-finding mission. Youâve got a job description, and after the phone screen has been set up, youâve got my name. You might also have an idea of the product or technology associated with this gig or you might not, but even without a product name, youâve got plenty of information to start with.
Do your research. Google me. Find out anything you can about what I do and what I care about. This isnât stalking, this is your career, and if I happen to be an engineering manager who writes a weblog, well, you can start to learn how I think. Maybe I donât have a weblog, but I post to mailing lists. Thatâs data, too.
How is this going to help you during the phone screen? Well, I donât know what youâre going to find, but anything you can gather is going to start to build context around this job that you know nothing about. This helps with phone screen nerves as well. See, I have your resumé, and you have nothing. Arenât you going to feel better about talking with a total stranger when you figure out from staring at my Flickr pages that I absolutely love Weimaraners? Isnât it going to be reassuring to know I swear in my Twitters? A bit of research into who you are talking to is going to level the information playing field.
Similarly, if you have a product name or technology, repeat the same process. What is the product? Is it selling well? What do other people think about it? Iâm not talking about a weekend of research here. Iâm talking about an hour or so of background research so that you can do one thing when the phone screen shows up: ask great questions.
Thatâs right. In your research, you want to find a couple of compelling questions, because at some point during the phone screen Iâm going to ask you, âDo you have any questions for me?â And that is the most important question Iâm going to ask.
Before I ask you the most important question, I need to figure out a couple of things early in our chat. What I need to learn is:
Iâm going to lead off with something simple and disarming. Itâs either going to be the weather or something I picked up from your extracurricular activities. âDo you really surf? So do I! Where do you surf?â These pleasantries appear trivial, but theyâre a big deal to me because I want to see if we can communicate. Itâs nowhere near a deal killer if the pacing of our conversation is awkwardâIâll adjust, but how off is it? Are we five minutes in and we still havenât said anything? OK, maybe we have a problem.
My follow-up questions will now start to focus on whatever question your resumé left me with. Iâve no idea what Iâm going to ask because it varies with every single resumé, so my thought is that you should have your resumé sitting in front of you because itâs sitting in front of me as well. Itâs my only source material.
Whatever these follow-up questions are, Iâm still figuring out how we communicate. This means you need to focus on answering the questions. It sounds stupid, but if itâs not absolutely clear to you what Iâm asking, itâs better to get early clarification rather than letting me jump in five minutes into your answer to say, âUh, thatâs not what I was asking.â
See, you and I are still tuning to each other. Itâs been 10 minutes now, and if weâre still not adjusted to each otherâs different communication styles, Iâm going to start mentally waving my internal yellow flag. It doesnât need to be eloquent communication, but we should be making progress.
Weâre past the softball phase of the interview, and now Iâm going to ask a hard question. This isnât a brainteaser or a technical question; this is a question that is designed to give you the chance to tell me a story. I want to see how you explain a complex idea over the phone to someone you donât know and canât see.
Again, who knows what the actual question will be, but you need to be prepared for when I ask the question that is clearly, painfully open-ended. Iâm not looking for the quick, clean answer; Iâm looking for a story that shows me more about how you communicate and how you think. Being an amazing communicator is not a part of most engineering jobs, I know this. Iâm not expecting Shakespeare, but I am expecting that you can confidently talk about this question because I found this question in your resumé and that is the only piece of data we currently have in common. If we canât have an intelligent discussion about that, Iâm going to start wondering about the other ways we arenât going to be able to communicate.
Weâre 20 minutes into the phone screen, and now Iâm going to turn it over to you when I ask, âDo you have any questions for me?â
When I tell friends that this is my favorite question, the usual response is, âSo, youâre lazy, right? You canât think of anything else to ask, so you go for the path of least resistance.â Itâs true. Itâs an easy question for me to ask, but it is essential, because I donât hire people who arenât engaged in what theyâre doing. And if you donât have a list of questions lined up for me, all I hear is: YOU DONâT WANT THIS JOB.
A well thought out question shows me that youâve been thinking about this job. It shows me youâre already working for it by thinking about the job outside of this 30-minute conversation. Yeah, you can probably wing it and ask something interesting based on the last 20 minutes, but the impression youâre going to make with me by asking a question based on research outside of this phone screen will make up for a bevy of yellow flags. It shows initiative and it shows interest.
And weâre done. It went by pretty quick, but the question is, âHowâd it go?â Hereâs a mental checklist to see how you did.
Were we struggling to keep things moving? Were there long silences? Well, we didnât tune appropriately. Again, not a deal killer, but definitely a negative.
What happened when we had different opinions? Did we talk through it, or did we start butting heads? This happens more than I expect on phone screens, and itâs not always a bad thing. Iâm not interested in you telling me what I want to hear, but if we are on opposite sides of the fence, how do we handle it? If a candidate is willing to pick a fight and dig in their heels in a 30-minute phone screen, Iâm wondering how often theyâre going to fight once theyâre in the building.
This is the hardest to quantify, but also the most important. Did we click? Now, I havenât done a technical interview in years. Others with more recent experience are going to drill down there if we bring you in the building. Thereâs a risk that if you get past the phone screen and you donât have the technical ability, weâre going to waste a half-day of my teamâs time interviewing someone who canât do the job, but Iâm vetting a more important aspect of you.
You are not a cog. The story we tell ourselves when someone we like chooses to leave the group or the company is, âEveryone is replaceable.â This is true, but this is a rationalization designed to lessen the blow that, crap, someone we really like is leaving. We are losing part of the team. Professional damage is done when a team member leaves, and while they are eventually replaceable, productivity and morale take a hit.
All of my softballs and questions are designed to answer the question, âAre you a person who weâd miss if you left?â As the leader of my group, I am hopefully representative of my team, so if after 30 minutes you and I havenât figured out how to communicate, thereâs a good chance you wonât click with part of the team as well.
How did I leave it? Did I give you a song and dance about how âweâre still interviewing candidates and weâll be in touch within the next weekâ? Well, thatâs OK, but what youâre really looking for is a specific next step like âIâm going to bring you inâ or âLetâs have you talk with more of the team.â An immediate and actionable next step is the best sign of success with a phone screen. If I donât give you this as part of the close, ask for it. If I stall, thereâs a problem.
A phone screen is not an interview; itâs a sanity check. I already know you meet the requirements for the job by looking at your resumé. The phone screen is going to tell me whether you meet the requirements of the culture of my team.
Unlike your resumé, where you send your hope to an anonymous recruiting address, the phone screen gives you leverage. The phone screen is the first time you get to represent yourself as a person. Itâs still a glimpse, but itâs the first time you can actively participate in your next job.
Get Being Geek now with the O’Reilly learning platform.
O’Reilly members experience books, live events, courses curated by job role, and more from O’Reilly and nearly 200 top publishers.