There are specific terms we use today that feel strangely anachronistic, and the phrase “phone screen” is one of them. My hypothesis on why we continue to use this term is that it has something to do with how recruiters and hiring managers typically make first contact.
My first phone screen for a job was in 1995. Back then, you had a single communication line leading into your home connected to a telephone. My roommates had to stay off the dial-up connection and not make phone calls so I would not miss my interview. The interviewer had a specific window to call me, and both of us had to end the call on time because I had to free up the phone line so other people in the house could use the telephone, and the interviewer had another person to call.
While technology has evolved dramatically in the nearly 30 years since my first phone screen, isn’t it strange that a company’s first live contact with you is often still through a phone (albeit a smartphone)?
It turns out that phone screeners have excellent reasons for being old-fashioned: The phone is more reliable than a video call. Internet connections stutter, and when they do, the conversation flow is interrupted. While video calls create more context around the conversation through body language and facial expression - none of this matters when you’re trying to extract facts by talking to as many people as possible as quickly as possible. You won’t always get a phone screen on the phone, but often you will. Maybe 30 years from now, we will call them video screens instead.
Ultimately, anyone who goes through a full round of interviews and either doesn’t accept or receive an offer could cost the company thousands of dollars. Therefore, the phone screen is a blunt instrument to determine why a candidate should not move forward. To master phone screens, you have to understand the mindset of the screener, and the fact many screeners still use phones in the screening process is a vital clue.
Broadly, candidates fail to move forward for three reasons:
On paper, the candidate is less competitive than an existing candidate in the pipeline. A less competitive candidate on paper faces an uphill battle to get through the process.
The candidate isn’t enthusiastic about the role or the company. A candidate who needs to be sold is less likely to accept an offer.
The candidate “rambles.” A candidate who uses more words than necessary to answer questions impedes the screener’s ability to make an assessment.
To maximize your chance of getting through a phone screen, I want to share my playbook for mitigating some of these pitfalls.
Five phone screen plays
Be prepared
You don’t get the privilege of moving forward if you do not prepare for the interview. It is critical to be ready. When you do not prepare, screeners get the impression you are not enthusiastic about the role or the company. While exceptionally qualified candidates can get a pass, candidates who do not prepare always get an annotation in their phone screen notes. Ironically, this bad first impression dooms many candidates who otherwise would have received an offer. If you’re fortunate to have several opportunities to pursue, make sure you have the time to prepare for the interview process. You are better off being selective and interviewing at fewer companies fully prepared than at several under-prepared.
Address qualification gaps
If you have qualification gaps, prepare to address them in the conversation. There’s a temptation to avoid the topic, but I argue this will work against you later. If the qualification is a meaningful part of the job, and someone on the panel discovers the gap later, the hiring manager may use it to disqualify you. Some hiring managers may even feel that you’ve been disingenuous.
On the other hand, if you address the gap proactively, you control the narrative around how you would mitigate the gap. Why are you the best person for the job despite not having all the qualifications in the job description? Instead of being disingenuous, you appear confident.
Tell your “story” in 5 minutes
Typical phone screens are just 30 minutes long. Invariably, at some point in the conversation, the topic will drift into what you did before and what motivated you to apply for the position. To engage the screener, tell a story.
Your story should include highlights, lowlights, and lessons learned from your career. I have found the most success using some form of the hero’s journey template.
Departure: What did you do to prepare you for the career that you have today?
Initiation: What unknowns in your career have you faced, how did you overcome them, and who did you work with along the way?
Return: What have you learned from your adventures?
If your career is long, I recommend you break up your story into a trilogy of stories, with your current act being the third act. If you’re earlier in your career, speak about your departure and initiations and what you envision the return phase to look like by you joining this company. Some of you may balk at telling your story or trilogy in 5 minutes, but time is working against you, and you can do it! If IGN can tell the entire Star Wars Saga in 7 minutes (two trilogies), you can certainly tell your story in under 5 minutes!
You are the hero of your own story, and if you tell this story well, people will want to be part of your story.
Demonstrate systems thinking
Software companies and the software they create are complicated. For these reasons, the ability to think in systems is universally screened at all job levels in our field because it demonstrates one’s innate ability to comprehend how such complex systems work. The Wikipedia definition of systems thinking provides a clear template of what you want to achieve when you answer every question:
Systems thinking is a way of making sense of the complexity of the world by looking at it in terms of wholes and relationships rather than by splitting it down into its parts. It has been used as a way of exploring and developing effective action in complex contexts. Systems thinking draws on and contributes to systems theory and the system sciences.
Here’s what I do to demonstrate systems thinking when I answer interview questions:
Clarify the question. Ask a few clarifying questions to demonstrate you understand the problem to be solved.
Define sufficient conditions. Define and validate the sufficient conditions for the problem to be solved. Sufficient conditions could be milestones within the solution space or the contours of the solution itself.
Provide a solution. Provide a solution walking the interviewer through why your logic addresses the question and meets the sufficient conditions.
Following this template has a critical benefit - it prevents you from falling into the rambling trap while providing the onramp to bring your interviewer along with you as you answer their question.
Interviewers will often move a person to the next phase if they can demonstrate systems thinking, despite proposing an incorrect or flawed solution. Conversely, a person who rambles their way to a solution may often get a pass, despite the correct answer.
Next steps
Don’t let the interviewer off the phone until you understand the next steps.
If the interviewer doesn’t immediately move you to the next round, don’t read too much into it. While it could be that you didn’t pass the phone screen, and you might get quietly rejected later, it could also be that you’re one of the earlier phone screens, and the interviewer has more calls to make.
If you’re sure the phone screen did not go well, ask for feedback on how you could have done better; don’t assume. Putting in all of this effort to prepare for an interview and not getting to move forward is an awful feeling, but you still have an opportunity to learn something by asking for feedback. If you don’t ask during the call, you may miss the chance to get detailed feedback. It will be tempting to plead your case, but I urge you to refrain from this. I’ve never seen anyone change their mind after they’ve made a go-no-go decision. Instead, try to understand the contours of their decision-making process and the reasons that led them to draw their conclusion.
Activity for today
Craft your story and practice it
Draft your story and iterate on it until you can tell your story in 5 minutes
Find friends or family you can practice your story on
If you’re uncomfortable leveraging friends and family, create a Loom video of you telling your story. The free Loom account limits your videos to 5 minutes, so you must finish in 5 minutes.
The Loom video may be helpful for you to share with folks as you network and prospect for new opportunities.