Work Daze

Are you a people person, an outgoing glad-hander who performs best when standing toe-to-toe when having a conversation? Or are you a mail male or female, someone who is shy and retiring in person, but absolutely blossoms when you can hide behind a letter or an e-mail?

Or could you be a telephone person? Can you pick up a telephone, and using your tongue as a rapier, effortlessly craft the perfectly-worded messages that effectively sells a product, a service or, most important of all, yourself?

I thought so.

Fact is, most of us are bumbling boneheads when it comes to presenting ourselves on the telephone. Our winning ways and charming personalities are completely lost in a string of “uhs” and “ahs” and “well, what I really meant to says.” Despite the high-tech telephone gizmos we stick in our ears, we have not progressed beyond that the shy, stumbling 12-year old who picked up the phone to deliver or receive an invitation to the 6th-grade dance.

Unless you’re in sales or customer service, your chronic phone freeze probably doesn’t much matter. But it could matter, big time, if you are trying to get yourself a new job and your potential employee insists on a telephonic pre-interview.

Telephone interviews are quite the trend. Your future employee understandably wants to see the cut of your jib before shelling out megabucks to transport your sorry stern to headquarters. And you must take phone interviews quite seriously, or so The Wall Street Journal suggests in Sarah E. Needleman’s recent “Career Journal.”

“Job hunters often mistakenly believe that phone interviews are less formal than face-to-face meetings, recruiters say. Yet they’re a critical first hurdle in landing a job.”

Will your faulty phone skills keep you from landing a big fish of a job offer, or will you leap over the interview hurdle with such panache that you are negotiating the thickness of the carpet in your executive suite before you hang up?

Here are some of Ms. Needleman’s tips:

Minimize Distractions

“If you have scheduled a conversation, plan to be in a quiet place,” a strategic staffing manager advises Ms. Needleman’s readers. He claims potential employees cannot feel your enthusiastic vibe when your chat is interrupted by “flushing toilets, clamoring dishes and barking dogs.”

I disagree. In an actual onsite interview, you have no choice but to reveal your slovenly, slacker self. But on the telephone, it’s “the theater of the mind.” Use the audio-only experience to present yourself as a dynamic, take-charge manager. Arrange for a co-worker to burst into your phone conversation with news of a “critical melt-down in the Topeka office.” Ask to be excused from the phone call, sit back, and count to ten. Then pop back on the phone to announce that you are terribly sorry, but you just had to put out a fire.

“I don’t know what’s wrong with management around here,” you comment. “They can’t make a move without me.”

Sharpen Verbal Skills

“Interviewers listen to clues indicating such qualities as passion for the job and professionalism,” another HR maven suggests. “Teen speak and other unpolished speech habits are a common knockout factor.”

Forgetting for a moment whether you even want to work in a company where you can’t call your boss “dude” or describe a strategic plan as “freakin’” to mention but two so-called “knockouts,” I see no reason why you have to as a PhD in linguistics (unless, of course, you are applying for a position as a PhD in linguistics.)

Let your potential employer know that you are a “regular gal or guy” by pointing out, say, that it’s difficult for you to discuss the position of chief auditor because you are so upset with that “total himbo,” Nick Lachley, for dating “a real hottie,” Lindsey Lohan, when it’s so obvious that Jessica Simpson, is still carrying a torch for her ex-husband babe-magnet. If you think an interviewer would rather discuss which accounting method you prefer, FIFO or LIFO, as compared to a sprightly discussion on the break-up of the year, you’re nuts.

Avoid Using A Cell Phone

A simple rule, but dead wrong. Use a cell phone and you can pretend to lose the connection when an difficult question comes up, like “ What do you do?” Or “Do you have any experience at all?” or “What’s your name?”

If that doesn’t work, you have only one option. “Sorry,” you say when opportunity calls. “Wrong number.”