next week I have a phone interview regarding an internship position at a very respectable company in my field. I applied online and I had made it through the first selection procedure and now they want to call me.
What can I expect from a phone interview? Do they want to see what my personality is like? Will they ask me technical questions about the position I applied for?
I've never done a phone interview and was wondering if somebody here could shine some light on it.
Honestly - it completely depends on the company, the position, and the person(s) interviewing you.
I've only had one phone interview, it was for a lead software tester position with a government organisation. I was expecting it to be extremely technically-oriented, so I had prepared for a lot of what I believed would be potential technical questions. I also prepared for a lot of scenario-based questions, e.g. "give an example of a time you had to solve a difficult problem, but couldn't use the regular method in which you would solve that problem".
Spent probably a whole week preparing.
When the call finally came, my two interviewers gave me an introduction of who they were, and told me how their company operated in terms of software testing. They then asked me "So now that you know what we do, what sort of experience do you have which is relevant to us?"
That was it, one question. I rambled on a little bit, but felt I answered it as best I could. I ended up getting the job.
My advice is: prepare as best you can for the worst case scenario; a bunch of technical questions relevant to the position. If you end up getting a fairly relaxed interview like I did, then that's fantastic, but it's always best to be prepared.
