Preface
In 1876, Alexander Graham Bell patented one of the most revolutionary inventions the world has ever seen: the telephone. It was a device that transmitted voice through electrical signals through wires. A tribute to human ingenuity, within decades the telephone possessed the power to alter the concept of global communications. While brilliant engineers are rightly credited for the creation of great technological advancements, we should not forget that dynamic business managers are owed acclaim for their commercial expansion. After more than a century of global commercial development, the telephone interview is the modern heir of Bell's first famous telephone call to summon his assistant to his work room.
The telephone interview, though just a speck on the global communications sphere, is worthy of careful consideration as an important skill with a specific purpose. Getting it right can make all the difference to your business. Although some employers have been using the telephone as a precursor to face-to-face interviews for decades, the world is changing. Interviewing remotely has never before been given the prominence that it enjoys today, especially since the most recent global economic downturn in 2008.
These tumultuous times have forced all hiring managers to appreciate the importance of searching for and hiring global talent through the most cost-effective means available. It has also differentiated the top performers from the average candidates. Money alone won't attract top talent; one needs to offer more to lure the best employees. This has led to the amalgamation of hiring and sales processes.
This book focuses on creating a holistic approach to the telephone interview as an effective and cost-saving hiring strategy. Over five chapters, we'll cover the best ways to make the most of interviewing by telephone.
What this book covers
Chapter 1, The Telephone Interview and Its Role in Hiring, explains why you should include telephonic interviews as a key part of your hiring process, and analyzes and explains the benefits and savings they can potentially deliver. The chapter will show you how the telephone interview, if planned and conducted properly, can bring a strong positive impact on an organization's employee strategy.
Chapter 2, Are You Doing It Correctly?, gives you the capability to review and examine how you conduct telephone interviews currently as a basis for improving. As you read this chapter, it will encourage you to self-assess your current preparation process for telephonic interviews. It will help you set benchmarks that will act as comparison and measurement tools.
Chapter 3, Plan, Conduct, and Assess, will cover organizing an assessment strategy that has been designed to facilitate the hiring of the most competent candidate with the minimum financial outlay. Do you want to select the most competent candidate with minimum resources outlay? Optimizing each process and minimizing the risks in order to achieve the business objectives is what every manager aims at. Every recruiter wants to hire the best available candidate for a vacant job role. But hiring the best needs "planning". This chapter takes you through the essentials of planning—both on a micro and macro scale—and provides you with the necessary tools you need to conduct a highly optimized telephone interview process.
Chapter 4, Avoid Common Mistakes, lists all the commonly made mistakes a recruiter can make at any of the stages provided in the previous chapter and provides solutions and advice on how to avoid or fix them. "Trial and error" isn't a bad technique to understand the mistakes and correct them in many aspects of life and business. In some cases, it is almost considered essential, but recruitment doesn't belong to this theory. So it will be much better if recruiters can learn from the mistakes others made and avoid repeating them. Managing a bad hire can be the most harrowing experience for an organization. Therefore it's better to prepare an error-free telephonic recruiting environment.
Chapter 5, Master the Skill – Training and Development, concludes the book by showing you how to include telephonic interview skills development training in your regular training calendar to maintain competency. It also teaches you how to win support for the adoption of a wider training program related to telephone interviews from the key management team, which is essential for improving on a company-wide level.
What you need for this book
You should have a desire to enhance the productivity of the recruitment process, and accept that a restructuring of existing recruitment strategy is potentially required. Such restructuring must emphasize adopting and mandating processes like telephone interviews. Adopting it wholeheartedly would require the company to give equal weight to each step involved and examine existing processes critically in the light of the solutions advised in this book.
Who this book is for
If you are a recruiter, manager, leader, or anyone aiming to work in one of these situations, this is the book for you. Organizations run and perform because of their talented pool of resources. Efficiency of a process is directly proportional to the quality of employee who is running or managing it. Computers don't run organizations—people run computers, which in turn run organizations. Any professional person who understands this fact and wants to champion the tricky business of recruitment, especially over the telephone, would benefit from reading this book. Any leader who wants to hire the best employees at an optimized cost must read this book.
Conventions
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New terms and important words are shown in bold.
Note
Make a Note
Warnings or important notes appear in a box like this.
Note
Action Point
Action points appear like this
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