Phone Interview in English [7 Tips for Success]

Hey, it's Annemarie with Speak Confident English.

This is exactly where you want to be every week to get the confidence you want

for your life and work in English.

Recently I've been getting many questions about job interviews in English,

especially questions about how to successfully do a job interview in English on

the telephone. I'm not going to lie to you.

Interviews on the telephone are particularly tricky and here's why.

Your goal of course is to successfully do the telephone interview and be invited

to the next stage of the interview process.

Their goal is to quickly eliminate as many candidates as possible so that the

company can focus on just a small group or a small pool of potential candidates

and you definitely want to be in that small group of potential candidates.

Today's Confident English lesson in the seven tips you learn from a successful

phone interview in English are going to help you get to that next stage of the

interview process.

All right,

tip number one to successfully do a phone interview in English is to warm up.

Now we use this phrasal verb a lot when we're talking about getting our body

warmed up for exercise. But this time, I mean warm up your voice,

especially if your job interview is in the morning.

The reason this is important is your voice on the telephone is the only

indicator the interviewer has of your personality,

your energy level, your enthusiasm for the job,

and much more so you want your voice to sound calm,

professional, and ready.

Have you ever noticed that in the morning sometimes your voice is a little

hoarse or groggy. What that means is you have to do a lot of things like ______,

excuse me,

we don't want to do any of that on the telephone and you don't want to take any

pauses to drink big gulps of water.

That definitely doesn't sound nice on the telephone.

So before your interview, warm up your voice by practicing, talking out loud.

If you love to sing, sing a little bit, drink a lot of water or hot tea.

Do all of that before the interview so that when you answer the phone call and

you go through all of the interview questions, your voice sounds calm,

confident and clear.

And here is another little tip that I love sharing with my students.

When you're doing an interview on the telephone,

I know that you're going to be nervous, everyone is nervous,

but I want you to practice speaking while you're smiling.

Smiling truly changes the way that your voice sounds.

Have you ever noticed that?

You can tell when your friend is really happy on the telephone,

it's because your friend is smiling and it completely changes her voice.

So I want you to practice doing that during the preparation stage of your

interview so that you can smile while you're on the telephone in your interview

and again, have that more positive influence on the sound of your voice.

But for now,

let's go to tip number two and this tip is to dress the part.

I know that it's very tempting to wear your pajamas or your comfy clothes or

your yoga pants and a sweatshirt and a telephone interview.

But I'm curious,

when you wear things like your pajamas around the house or your comfy clothes,

how do you act? How do you think, how do you feel?

You probably feel super relaxed.

You're very casual and you're not so focused on being professional,

and that's great if you're at home watching a movie and eating popcorn,

but this phone interview is still an interview,

and when you wear business professional clothes,

it changes your mindset. You change your body language,

your tone of voice and the level of focus or energy that you have.

This might seem like such a small step,

but it will help you get in the right professional mindset for your interview.

Tip number three is to answer the phone professionally.

If you have a telephone interview scheduled,

then you know the exact time that the interviewer will be calling you,

so you should never answered the telephone with something like hello.

Do you notice the intonation in my voice? Hello?

That intonation indicates uncertainty or a question and you should never have

that kind of uncertainty in your voice when you're answering the telephone to

begin your phone interview,

you want to answer it with a professional greeting. Now,

just a few weeks ago,

I did a full lesson on 46 must have phrases for professional telephone calls in

English.

I'm going to leave a link to that video here and in the show notes below the

video,

but here is one way I definitely recommend answering the telephone when the

interviewer calls you. Hello, this is Annemarie.

It's that simple - a hello, but notice that my voice is going down.

Hello, this is Annemarie. When my voice goes down,

it shows more control and confidence in my speaking.

Tip number four is to have all your materials ready: your resume or your CV,

your cover letter, the job description.

You could even have your LinkedIn page on your computer in front of you.

This is one of the bonuses of a phone interview when the other person can't see

you.

You can have all those materials in front of you so that if you start to feel

stuck or you get nervous,

you can quickly reference or look at your resume, the job description,

whatever you need to keep you focused and going forward.

Now one thing before we move on to the next tip,

if you have all those materials printed and available,

be careful about the noise that all that paper will make. If you move it around.

I recommend that you have everything laying on a desk or a table before the

phone call starts and have it in place so it's easy for you to find.

You don't want to be moving things around and creating a lot of background noise

or distraction during your phone interview.

Tip number five is something I work on with all of my students when we're

preparing for job interviews. Pause before you speak.

When we are nervous,

we naturally want to speak faster and we feel this pressure to immediately

respond when someone asks us a question.

But when we do that, when we respond too fast or when we speak quickly,

it indicates fear or anxiety. And again,

this is an opportunity for you to communicate that you are a calm professional

who is in control.

Taking a slight or very short pause before you answer a question definitely

communicates that message.

Let me show you how long that pause should be,

so let's imagine that I'm in an interview.

I'm going to share a question the interviewer might ask me and then I'm going to

pause just briefly before I start my answer.

So first the interviewer Annemarie,

tell me about some of the challenges you faced as an academic director.

That's a really good question.

I definitely remember a time when and then I would continue my story.

Did you notice there was just a short little pause.

The benefit of that pause is I don't sound rushed or nervous and it gives me

just a moment to think about what I want to say and get all my ideas organized

so that I can communicate them easily.

Tip number six is do your research before you start the job interview,

your interviewer will know immediately if you have thoroughly read the job

description. If you've reviewed the company's website,

if you're familiar with the company's products or services,

who their clients or competitors are,

because they're going to be listening for some important key words.

And if you don't use those keywords,

they immediately start putting you on the no list.

You want to make sure that you're using the language and vocabulary that is

important to the company.

The best way to find some of those important words is to review the company

website. Look for words that are repeated,

often review their mission and values and look at the job description.

Carefully look for power words.

I just did a lesson on power words last week.

Look for verbs that talk about what you're supposed to do in the job and and

finally, tip number seven is say thank you. Now, of course,

at the end of the interview, before you finish,

you should definitely thank your interviewer on the telephone,

but I also recommend that you send a short thank you note or a quick thank you

email the same day of your interview.

It's one of the best ways to be memorable and to show that you truly want the

position.

And with that you have seven tips to successfully do a telephone interview in

English. And now I have one challenge question for you.

I want to know what is the best piece of advice you have received for doing a

job interview in English.

You might have a piece of advice that is perfect for someone else in the

Confident English community.

So I would love to hear what it is and I have a second question for you.

I would love to know what question in an interview makes you the most nervous.

What questions worry you the most?

You can share your answers with me in the comments just below this video and if

you found this video helpful to you, I would love to know.

You can let me know in three very simple ways. Number one,

give this video a thumbs up and subscribe to the Speak Confident English YouTube

channel so you never miss one of my Confident English lessons.

Number two,

you can share this lesson with family or coworkers on Facebook and LinkedIn.

And finally,

if you know someone looking for a job and you know they're going to do a job

interview in English, email them this lesson,

they will definitely thank you for it. With that, have a wonderful week.

Thank you for joining me and I'll see you next time for your Confident English

lesson.