Phone interviews can save time and speed up the hiring process. This cheat sheet will make it easy to ask both general and job-specific questions, allowing you to compare candidates in a systematic way.

From the cheat sheet:

This cheat sheet is an IT manager aid for recruiting a qualified support technician. Complete each field to keep telephone interviews on track and ensure that important details aren’t neglected during the first step of the recruitment process. General candidate information is collected first, followed by answers to position-specific questions. Recording qualifications, experience, professional objectives, and temperament will give you a baseline against which to compare potential candidates. We’ve supplied sample answers to help you complete the cheat sheet. You can replace them with your own candidate information.

What daily production responsibilities do you fulfill in your current role?
The candidate said they were responsible for servicing 20 to 25 help desk support requests a day. In addition to using the university’s ticketing system to track service requests and assign service priority, the candidate was responsible for entering the amount of time they invested servicing each request and marking issues “closed” upon resolution.

What other work experience do you have that makes you a good candidate for our opening?
The candidate said they’re responsible for updating help desk documentation specifying solutions to various common issues. An example they used involved a printer that commonly requires installation using a nontraditional driver. The candidate is responsible for updating the university’s documentation to help other help desk technicians minimize the amount of time spent troubleshooting the problem and proceed more quickly to resolution.

The candidate added that while working in their previous position as a help desk Intern, they also regularly created new service desk forms and published them to the organization’s intranet to assist the firm’s users in reporting issues they needed help with.

What challenges do you seek in a new position?
The candidate said they don’t feel they’re currently receiving full opportunity to apply their computer science degree, certifications, and energy. They’re hoping to demonstrate their capacity over a six- to 12-month period serving as a service technician before they might be promoted to a tier 2 resource or even a service manager.