Telephone Interviews

First, make sure you are comfortable and able to conduct a conversation without interruption. You want to be in a position where you are able to stay focused on the questions without having to ask the interviewer to repeat something.

Have your resume on-hand. Questions about a specific phrase or role might have caught the interviewer's attention and they might want some clarification. So, having your resume at your fingertips might just avoid an overly pregnant pause where you try to figure out what is being referred to.

Have some notes prepared and ready with understandable short answers to common questions. Also use your notes to ask questions about specific things you might have found out from your research.

Try to keep your answers concise; don't ramble. Offering more information than necessary at this stage can do more harm than good because you and the interviewer are both suffering from the same disadvantage: you can hear each other, but you can't read each other's body language that is an intuitive part of a face to face interview.

Keep the conversation a conversation. At this point, you both are professionals trying to gather as much information as possible about each other.

Take general questions with a pause and then answer succinctly. A question like "Tell me about yourself" could, if you are not careful, result in a rather lengthy discourse on your life since college and may simply be too much. So, make a brief statement like "I've been in the Pharmaceutical Industry for X years and have been involved in a variety of roles including THIS, THAT, and THE OTHER THING. For the past Y years, I have done… What specifically would you like me to talk about?" With this approach, you'll get to point out the things that you've done that are important to the interviewer and the company.

Be prepared to tell the interviewer about your availability in general terms (not specifics… let your recruiter handle that). If asked, this is obviously a good sign and if you know what your schedule is for the next few weeks, it will start the process a bit sooner, rather than later.

Don't be afraid to ask, at the end of the call, "Have I answered all of your questions?" and "Where do we go from here?"