How to Prepare for a Phone Interview

I know my faithful readers -- all three of you -- have been waiting with bated breath to hear what happened after my hour-long job interview yesterday with Rosetta Stone.

First of all, I PREPARED for the interview, which I originally didn't plan on doing, since I wasn't all that sure I wanted the job. But I went online and I read this. And this.

The biggest thing I did was to actually take the advice of dressing up for the interview as if it were in person. I took a shower and put on a suit, makeup and high heels.

And you know what? It worked. Because every time I looked in the mirror, I saw someone who looked professional, which helped me sound more professional as I answered the questions.

One thing I didn't do was rehearse my answers enough. The articles I read said you should have four or five points you want to get across and keep telling the same stories about yourself over and over to illustrate those points. I wasn't that great at this -- especially since the interviewer spent a lot of time asking me about jobs I'd had 15 years ago.

Long story short, when we got to the end of the interview, the interviewer asked me if I had any questions. I said, "Yes, what is the salary range you're offering for this position?"

It turned out to be about half what I'm earning now.

So my takeaway from all this is:

1. Prepare for a phone interview just like you would prepare for an in-person job interview.

2. Companies should be up front about salaries. If Rosetta Stone had been open from the beginning about the kind of pay they were offering, that woman could have spent an hour interviewing someone who was a better match. As it was, she wasted her time. (My time wasn't wasted, however -- I got a blog post and a lot of new information about job interviewing out of the experience.)