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Handling those Pesky Phone Interviews | 4 comments (4 topical, 0 hidden)

[new] first reaction -- wah, wah (3.00 / 1) (#2)
by Anonymous Hero on Thu Feb 05, 2004 at 12:28:11 PM PDT

My first reaction to this article is wah, wah.

In the private sector, for most government jobs, et al, the phone interview always comes first!! So stop griping, as the phone interview is progress.

A couple of tips to add:
1) An answering machine (or voice mail) is indeed a must, a cell phone with voice mail may be better, but do be sure your message is professional!!!!
2) If you get caught with an unscheduled interview, no matter where you are, say something like "Could you hold a second, I'd like to take notes during this interview and need to grab a pen and paper". Do this even if you have pen and paper with you! Take the time to take a deep breath, compose yourself, And PRAY!

And, BTW, if you are the one conducting the phone interviews, be professional and schedule it. Most applicants do give you e-mail addresses, or have a admin assistant arrange the time.

a friendly amendment on a tip by jkuchen, 03/04/2004 15:11:10 PDT (none / 0)

[new] My favorite phone interview question. (none / 0) (#1)
by jvano on Tue Jan 27, 2004 at 04:27:01 PM PDT

It was a phone interview for Univesity of Minnesota at Morris.

Background: I grew up in near Alexandria in west Central MN which less than 30 min away from the small town of Morris.

The question (asked by a student who was one of the interviewers) and my response were something along the lines of...

Q:UM Morris is in a small town that is 2-3 hrs away from any "big" cities. How would you deal with this isolation?
Q: <laughter> Sorry, but I don't exactly view Morris as that "isolated". I grew up in Alexandria and my parents still live there. So, far from this being a detractor that I would have to "deal" with, I view this as one of the benifits of your school!

Unfortunatly[*], I got a VIGRE post doc offer and informed Morris that I was off the market before things had any chance to progres much further.

[*] Getting the VIGRE post doc offer wasn't what was unfortunate. Having to withdraw my name and take my self off the market before really hearing back from Morris (and several other really cool schools) was the unfortunate part. When it comes to issues of timing, I think that the "endgame" of any job hunt is like this and the timeline of postdocs searches seems much earlier than tenure track searches. So, when I contacted some of the schools that I really wanted to know about, they were too early in their search process to have any sense of how likely I was to get an offer and I was faced with the whole "a bird in hand vs two in the bush" issue.

postdocs before tenure tracks by sormani, 05/13/2004 19:31:36 PDT (none / 0)

Handling those Pesky Phone Interviews | 4 comments (4 topical, 0 hidden)

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