Had a phone interview this evening for a job in NS. Oh dear, think it went badly. There were a few HR type questions which I always struggle with because you can't easily prepare for them. I also said a lot of "and um" which isn't a good thing. They also informed me at the start that it would take about an hour to undertake the interview. 30 mins later I was finished. Don't think that is a good sign.

Don't hold out much hope on this one. One the positive front at least it's more experience and I also found the silences you get on telephone interviews easier to cope with than before.

The ones you think went badly are normally the ones you end up being offered - so chin up and think positive

Don't worry too much about performances on phone type interviews, they are the hardest ones to do from both sides. Body language and meaningless chat are so important and tend to extend interviews to longer than they should take. If you had a recording of the interviewers this end there would have probably been a lot of head nodding and smiling to encourage you to go on whereby you found only silence at your end of the phone, people tend to forget to use vocal encouragement. Phone interviews also get straight to the point so a 30 - 40 minute interview would have taken over an hour if you'd shown up in their office.....

Cheers

Dobbie

Its a good sign that you are getting the phone interviews - as has been said above, its really hard to gauge the interviewers reactions to your responses because you cant see and body language. I was decorating the house for selling at the time and did my interview in some manky tracky bottoms covered in paint! (See there are some advantages to a phone interview!)

Best of luck!
Flossie

It may not be doom and gloom. You lasted 30 minutes. It didn't end after ten.

Also it is good practice for the next interview.

Good luck and stay positive.

I had a phone interview last year. It went very well, I even prepared for it by having prompt notes. Then I had had two more very positive interviews with the big boss and an offer to be flown down to the company's office to 'meet the team'. When I visited the office I was even asked when I wanted to start.

A week later I got an e-mail saying my application had been unsuccessful.

I guess it doesn't matter how badly or well things go, you just never know!

I had a similar experience once some 30 years ago. One interview with a senior VP. Within half an hour although he did not offer me the job as such he did ask me when I could start. He said he didn't need to meet any more candidates to make up his mind.

We even settled on pay.

In retrospect it was all too good to be true. We left it on the basis he would 'get back to me very shortly with good news'.

I recall phoning my wife before I jumped on a bus to get home. She too could not believe it since it went so fast.

A week later no letter or phone call. So I called him. Left umpteen messages. No answer. Then a girl called me at work to say he had 'gone on a month's vacation'.

That was when I gave up.How bizarre! Yes sh*t happens to us all!

PS .. It gave a whole new meaning to counting ones chickens before .....

Look on the bright side.
If you had of got the job this incompetent low-attention-span dipstick would have made your life 50 different kinds of hell.

Honestly I have never ever thought about it. It was just this thread that evoked memories. Philosophically it all boils down to a few hard knocks. Like most things that seem at the time to be devastating in retrospect, some 30 years later, I realise it wasn't 'the end of the world'.

Also as a rookie thirty-five year old I was far more trusting, and probably even somewhat naive, than I am today.