Phone Interviews

In our ever-more-global society, often initial interviews for jobs will take place over the phone. I had one such 90-minute interview on Tuesday morning. Phone interviews are a doubled edged sword; you can look @ your resume and at relevant materials to form your answers, but the interviewer can't put a face with your name at all, which means your personality has a harder time shining through.
I dreaded the "60-90 minute interview" scheduled for 10:30 am; I had no idea what we could find to talk about for an hour and half, let alone the fact that i *hate* phone conversations.
It turned out to be a pretty typical interview set up for this particular company (it's in the education field, but i wouldn't be teaching in a classroom--i'd have more of a support role): lots of questions about the exact steps I took to solve a problem or accomplish a long-range task. It's helpful to keep a copy of your resume handy when you're conversing with potential employers--they probably have a copy in front of them too. This interviewer had also sent a few website links to look over before the interview--i had them open in my browser, which helped when she asked more specific questions testing my knowledge of the position and the mission of the company.
Though phone interviewers allow for a degree of comfort in that you can have some pretty obvious cheat sheets around, it by no means divests you of the duty to prepare by reviewing any links or materials sent before the phone conversation, and it always helps to keep that list of skills or accomplishments close at hand (those 2 or 3 things that you want the interviewer to remember about you that are especially strong and unique).

This is my weekend off from job-searching; i'm indulging my American-history-buff side and heading to Williamsburg! Up next week, i think Rachel has some big plans for the blog...