In general, you should not allow yourself to be interviewed on the telephone. A telephone interview will not result in a job offer and may even cost you a face-to-face interview. However, you will not always be able to avoid telephone interviews. Many PEs will insist on talking to you before setting up a face-to-face interview, especially if they intend to pay transportation and other costs to have you flown to their location.
Since you will have to talk with some PEs on the phone, you should turn the situation around to your advantage. Use the telephone interview to obtain as much information as possible about a job before an interview. Also, as you will soon see, you can use the telephone to generate interviews. How do you obtain information about a job without getting interviewed yourself? You must control the conversation so that you ask the questions and provide only the information you want to-just as in your sales letter-without appearing to do so. Sound tough? Using the Telephone Training Program (TTP), it is not as tough as it sounds.
What the TTP Is and What It Will Do for You?
TTP stands for Telephone Training Program. I call it a training program because it not only represents a source of interviews, but also gives you essential training that you need in order to exploit and maximize the number of interviews you can obtain in other ways, to negotiate over the phone, and finally to make the best impression you possibly can before a face-to-face meeting.
The only way to learn to handle yourself over the telephone is to do it. The telephone training program I will outline accomplishes exactly that. You will talk to executives with the authority to hire, and you will present yourself much as you did in the sales letter. Your task is to persuade the executive to invite you in for an interview and to gain as much information about the position as possible. If you become proficient in this technique, you will be able to line up a large number of interviews, as well as significantly increase the number of offers you receive. For the average job hunter, two interviews per day through the TTP is a good number to shoot for.
The TTP should be started as soon as you have your sales letter campaign under way and you have started to respond to advertisements. You should continue the TTP for two to three weeks, or until you have run out of companies in your local area that you might be interested in working for. If you are in a large metropolitan area and an average-size industry, the TTP can probably be continued indefinitely throughout your campaign. You will be honing your telephone manner and getting interviews.
The primary source list of companies for your TTP will be the telephone book. Look under your industry in the Yellow Pages, and simply work down the list. If you do this, you will need to get the executive's name.
Getting the Decision Maker's Name
The quickest and most direct way to get the hiring executive's name is to call the company. Ask the receptionist for the name of the chief buyer, director of sales, or whatever position is directly above the one you are seeking. If the receptionist doesn't give you the executive's first name (the most common response will be "That's Mr. Smith"), ask for it. If you are asked why you want the first name, you can say that you like to get on a first-name basis with people as soon as possible. After you have obtained the executive's full name and written it down, ask to speak to him.
Another way of getting the executive's name is from a trade directory of the industry or from an executive register such as Standard & Poor's. However, trade directories have their disadvantages: they may not contain the name you need; they are very quickly outdated; and unless you are dealing in one industry, you may need more than one.
How to Get Through to the Hiring Executive?
The first step in getting through to the hiring executive is to get past the executive's secretary. Many executive job hunters who have no problem getting through a secretary on the job have very real problems breaking through when they are job hunting. The employed executive making a business call doesn't stop to think twice about another executive's secretary and would probably feel insulted if the secretary failed to connect him, even if the other executive was at a higher level. However, the job-seeking executive frequently lacks confidence and feels uncomfortable with the task of calling.
To overcome this feeling, you must maintain a positive mental attitude and practice the techniques for getting through to the executive outlined in this. Before you can get through the executive's secretary you must find out the executive's full name. Then, when you talk with the secretary, you should ask for the executive by first and last name and give your own full name. Speak with confidence (not rudeness or arrogance).
You can also ask your own secretary, if you have one, to call and tell the other secretary that you wish to speak with the executive. This technique makes it relatively easy for you to get through.
