Phone Interviews, Unemployment Rate Explained, And The "New" Retirement Plan

Hopefully everyone in the Northwest is keeping cool today with near record temperatures this week. With the way things have gone this year, it would be nice to have a "heat wave" of employment so to speak. Well when opportunities come about you need to capitalize on them. Today, recruiters and hiring managers are using phone interviews as a first round of screening for potential hires. No longer it seems that you can just cruise your way through the phone interview and go straight to the actual face to face interview. So, this article from Spherion Career Blog gives some great tips on how to prepare for the interview. Here are the five tips that they recommend:

1. Conduct the phone interview in a location that is quiet with no distractions.
2. Make sure you schedule the interview when you have time to think about your answers and are not rushing.
3. Treat the phone interview as the first round instead of a preliminary necessity.
4. If it helps, dress for the phone interview. Maybe not in a suit, but make sure you have showered and dressed if you are at home.
5. Prepare by practicing your interview answers, and use all of the interviewing skills you would if this was a face to face meeting.

With all these news reports about the unemployment rate being at a certain percentage, we often wonder how they come up with the numbers that they do. Well here is a post from the Wiser Worker Blog that breaks down the unemployment rate. It does not represent the amount of United States citizens who are not working. Instead, it represents the amount of people actively seeking employment who cannot find it.

With people having to work longer than they anticipated in life, retirement just is not an option. Working has become the new "retirement" plan for a lot of people. Everyone has seemed to take a hit in this economy, and their nest eggs are not stretching as far as they had planned. Well to help those in need you can always look to Wiser Worker.com or Employment Guide.com. We even have a job fair coming up next month for those still looking for work.

So Portland, what are your phone interviewing tips? Also, what is your retirement plan and do you see yourself working much longer than you anticipated? Please leave your comments below.