Five questions you should ask during your screening calls

Screening via a phone call time is most effective. During these 15 to 30 minutes, you’ll have to assess whether you’ll launch a proper interview process with the candidate. You’ll also have to understand their main drivers in life, and to get them psyched about the company so that they’ll engage with the next steps. Last but not least, you’ll have to understand as early as possible if there’s any huge potential no-gos down the line, so as to end the process as early as possible.

You don’t want to hang up without having the answers to these five questions:

1. What are the 2–3 main factors you’ll prioritize when choosing your next position?
2. Imagine we launch a process yet you don’t get to join the company — either because we did not make an offer or you did not accept it. What’s most likely to have happened?
3. What are your salary expectations?
4. What’s your timeline, how fast do we need to be or how long do we have to get to know each other?
5. Early reference check — this one’s longer, read more about it here: How to embed reference checks into your tech interviewing process

What do you think? What are your killer questions for the screening call?