Interview with a Ring

On the QT Newsletter, Interview with a Ring
Attachment: Interview with a Ring
November 3, 2009

Did you know? When employers want to narrow a pool of job candidates, they frequently use phone interviews to screen applicants. In phone interviews since both parties are deprived of visual cues, interviewers must rely on how a person sounds to make important hiring decisions. According to Psychology Today, people can estimate a speaker’s height, weight, and age from a person’s voice as accurately as they can after viewing his/her photo. Consequently, within a few seconds of hearing a candidate’s voice, the interviewer has formed a mental picture of the job seeker. Since so much is riding on the sound of their voices, give your students an added advantage by helping them evaluate their sound and add energy and enthusiasm to their voices. After all, it is not so much what they say, but how they say it.

Try this:

• Explain that in today’s workplace, many employers are doing a telephone interview before inviting applicants in for a face-to-face interview.
  Has anyone experienced a phone interview? What was it like?
  What are some of the advantages to a phone interview?
  What are a few disadvantages to a phone interview?
• Have your class view this WSJ clip (3:45 minutes) “Acing a Phone Interview” and ask questions about tips from the video.
  Why should you look in a mirror? (reminds you to show emotion)
  What is a benefit of walking around during the interview? (adds energy to your sound)
  What are two things you want to avoid? (interrupting the interviewer and long responses)
• Distribute the activity Interview with a Ring. Explain that since so much depends on the sound of their voices, this activity will help them evaluate and improve their sound.
• After students complete the activity, come back together and discuss what they experienced.
• Suggest/assign the short online activity Interview with a Ring for additional tools and resources for successful phone interviews.

Add an Experience: A voicemail greeting tells job recruiters a lot about the communication savvy and sensitivity of a prospective candidate. Students often forget to pay attention to the little detail of how their voicemail message sounds when they start filling out job applications. Employers will definitely pay attention, though. If a voicemail message sounds unprofessional, recruiters will just hang up without leaving a message, and the job applicant will never get a chance to interview with them. Encourage your students to listen to their voice mail greetings and if they do not sound professional, to record a new one.

Quik Quote: Within 7 to 12 seconds of hearing us speak, people form lasting impressions about us … our capabilities, intelligences, even about how we look.
Susan Berkley, Voice Coach