The HR screening call

After shortlisting, many organisations ask HR to phone each candidate before the panel. The call lasts 10 to 20 minutes, often comes from an unknown number, sometimes a Nairobi or Kenyan number, and usually with no appointment. Its job is to filter: HR checks the facts that would waste the panel's time if they were wrong, writes short notes, and passes the list to the hiring manager. It feels informal. It is scored.

• Availability: when could you start, and what notice do you owe your current employer? Answer with a date or a number of weeks, not “any time”.
• Salary: your expected range, and whether it fits their grade. Have a researched range ready and ask for theirs; the Salary module shows how.
• Location and travel: are you willing to be based in the duty station named in the advert, and to travel to field sites? Be honest now; a refusal after the offer burns the bridge.
• Basic fit and language: a one-minute summary of your experience, and whether you can hold the conversation in English if the panel will be in English.
• Documents: are your certificates and ID available, and do you have the right to work where the post is? Sometimes also: “Did anyone ask you for money during this process?”

1. 1From the day you apply, keep a call sheet on your phone for each application: organisation, post, duty station, the salary range you wrote, the closing date, and three lines on why you fit. When the call comes you open it in five seconds.
2. 2During working hours in the weeks after a deadline, answer unknown numbers politely and by name: “Hello, this is Hodan.” Missed calls are often not repeated.
3. 3Move to a quiet place with signal before the questions start: out of the shop, off the bus, away from the television. Stand up; your voice is clearer.
4. 4Have a pen. Write the caller's name, the organisation and anything they promise: “panel next Tuesday”, “we will email the test”. Repeat the key facts back before you hang up.