How do I screen candidates over the phone?

Hi, Donna here. It’s the first day of a new week and we have more top tips for you from our 52 top tips from our HR in a box product. So it’s day five of our tips. And we’re talking today about telephone screening as part of the recruitment process. 

Telephone screening is a great call for reducing the amount of time spent in face-to-face interviews. It can be used for all shortlisted applicants as a first interview stage, or only used to actually obtain key information. So you may ask about their notice period, or you may ask about salary expectations in that first telephone interview, telephone screening. 

I would really recommend that you have a set of questions that you work through so that you’re asking each applicant the same questions. And this is for your protection as much as anything else in case somebody comes back and disputes why they were or weren’t shortlisted or puts in a complaint perhaps for discrimination. So it’s really important that you actually keep a really good set of notes for each person that you’ve interviewed. 

Once you’ve spoken to 10 or 15 applicants, if you don’t have that set of notes, it’s going to get quite confusing. So as part of your interview process, do think about telephone screening. It’s a really powerful first step, even with a shortlist of candidates