Jobs

What should I expect during a 15-minute job interview screening? It’s so short!

Elaine Varelas advises on how to make a good impression during a 15-minute screening interview.

Ask the Job Doc. Boston.com

By Elaine Varelas

Q.  What is an employer looking for in a 15-minute screening interview?

A. A short screening interview allows employers to quickly assess your basic qualifications, such as relevant experience, skills, and education, to determine if you are an actual candidate for the position as opposed to a paper fit. Before an interviewer commits to investing an hour or more of their time and potentially organizational leader’s time, they want to ensure that the candidate meets the basic qualifications required for the role. They will check for baseline hard skills. They want to know that you meet the basic requirements for the job, whatever those job-specific skills (aka technical skills) might be. If you’re a finance person, you may say that you did something on your resume, but a few questions can highlight what you did, or if someone else did that work. If you’re in the Human Resources field, they want to know if you are a strategic leader, a manager, or an expert in a specific area – compensation and benefits, or employee relations, or HRIS. 

Great resumes can get through the applicant tracking system, but they may not meet the level of skill required to succeed in the role. Interviewers can assess the basic competencies and technical skills of candidates through just a few questions during interviews. They may have three or four questions to determine if the experiences and technical skills listed on your resume are in fact at the level required for the role.

During those 15 minutes, it’s also important to demonstrate soft skills. They will be paying close attention to your personality style during this short meeting. Can you develop rapport with the person doing the screening? Can you make eye contact on a Zoom call? Do you show an interest in the organization by asking questions, in addition to answering questions quickly? They will pay close attention to your response time to questions and how clearly you answer questions to gauge your understanding.

Every interviewer wants to know that you have prepared for the interview and that you can think quickly on your feet. Before the screening, be sure to read over the job posting, have your Resume handy, and do some background research to learn more about the organization. They may ask you what attracted you to apply for the role. Make sure you are able to communicate how your qualifications would make you a good fit for the role and an excellent team member and contributor. They want to gauge a candidate’s communications skills before moving on to the next step in the interviewing process. Their goal is going to be to narrow down the list of candidates that will move on to the next step in the interviewing process.

When a screening interview winds down, be sure to express appreciation to the interviewer for their time in talking to you about the position. One of the most important closing questions you can ask is, “I’m very interested in the position. Could you please let me know if you will be recommending that I move forward in the interview process?” Don’t leave yourself in the dark not knowing how you did. If you need to develop your interview skills for screening interviews, you need to find that out as soon as possible, or you’ll be eliminated from being able to go into more depth about what you can bring to an organization. Overall, a 15-minute job screening can be worth your time as it allows you both to determine if you might be a good fit for the position, and if the organization is right for you which can save you time and emotional resources in the hiring process.