Tools for the Job–Telephone Interviews

One of the joys – but also pressures – of being an independent, sovereign professional is choosing exactly the tools you want for the job in hand.

When it comes to telephone interviews, the ability to record a conversation (with the other party’s permission, of course) and then to play it back at your own pace is near essential.

I’ve spent a bit of time trying to find the configuration that gives me the right results with the minimum amount of moving parts and I’ve settled on these:

Citrix GoToMeeting – I’m currently doing quite a bit of work for Citrix and I’ve found GoToMeeting a great solution for pre-arranged meetings.  The usual one-to-many voice and video conference facilities generally seem to produce good quality connections and the Record facility creates sound files straight to your hard-drive.

Skype – Call quality on Skype seems to have improved dramatically in recent years.  As with GoToMeeting, I use my headset and have my hands free to create superfluous notes or gesticulate wildly.  Buying Skype credits and using their call-to-landline or mobile facility allows me to use Skype for most of my interview calls and I can record both voice and video using…

Evaer (Excellent Video and Audio Recorder) – Evaer is a pretty powerful tool for recording Skype sessions and it’s simple to use.  The resulting sound (or video) files can be reviewed using…

Transcribe! – Transcribe is intended as a musician’s tool and I’ve used it for years while playing guitar.  However, it works equally well for any sound file.  From an interview perspective, the key attributes are the ability to bookmark, create loops, replay, slow down and filter out background noise.  Ideal for those indistinct responses.