Phone screen questions to ask candidates

The 30-minute structure

1. 0–3 min — Your name, the role, how long this will take, what happens next.
2. 3–8 min — “Tell me about what you are working on now.” Listen for scope and ownership.
3. 8–18 min — One substantive question about something they built, with follow-ups.
4. 18–22 min — Why they are looking, what they want next, timeline.
5. 22–27 min — Their questions.
6. 27–30 min — Compensation range and next steps, stated clearly.

The questions worth asking

• “Tell me about what you are working on now.” Opens the conversation and immediately shows scope. A candidate who describes a system, their part in it and why it matters is already demonstrating more than a CV can.
• “What are you looking for that you are not getting now?” Better than “why are you leaving,” which invites a diplomatic non-answer. You are checking whether what they want is something this role actually offers.
• One depth question about something they built. Pick the most relevant item on their CV and ask them to go a level deeper than it is written. This is the only real assessment in a phone screen.
• “What does your timeline look like, and are you in other processes?” Logistics are part of the screen. Knowing a candidate has a final round elsewhere next week changes how you schedule.

What not to do in a phone screen

• Do not run a technical quiz. Trivia over the phone, without a shared screen or thinking time, measures recall under awkward conditions.
• Do not sell for twenty minutes. The candidate agreed to the call; they are already interested. Sell at the end, after you know whether you want them.
• Do not skip compensation. Finding out in the final round that your range and theirs never overlapped wastes everyone's time, most of all theirs.
• Do not leave next steps vague. “We will be in touch” is how good candidates drift to companies that told them a date.

The four signals to decide on

• Relevant experience — has this person done work of roughly this shape and scope before, or demonstrably adjacent work?
• Communication — can they explain something technical to someone who was not there? This is a genuine job requirement, not a proxy for polish.
• Motivation — is there a real reason this role fits what they said they want?
• Logistics — compensation range, notice period, location and timeline all compatible?

What a phone screen cannot tell you

It is worth being explicit about the limits, because phone screens are where most good candidates are lost. Thirty minutes on a call cannot tell you how someone reasons through an unfamiliar problem, how they work with a team, or how deep their technical knowledge runs. It can tell you whether their experience is roughly relevant and whether a conversation with them is productive. Rejecting on anything beyond those four signals means rejecting on a sample too small to support the inference — and the candidates most likely to be lost that way are the ones who interview badly in the first ten minutes and well in the next fifty.

Running screens at volume without them blurring

• Use the same four questions every time. Comparability is the whole point, and at volume it is the only thing keeping the fifteenth screen calibrated against the first.
• Book 45 minutes, use 30. The buffer absorbs overruns and gives you five minutes to write the decision before the next call.
• Decide before the next call starts. A decision deferred to the end of the day is a decision made on recall rather than evidence.
• Track your pass rate. If you are passing more than about half, the screen is not filtering; if under one in ten, the problem is upstream in sourcing, not in the screen.

Write the decision down immediately

Phone screens blur together within a day. Record a yes or no, the four signals, and one sentence of evidence for each, within five minutes of hanging up. If you are a hiring manager running your own screens, see how to run a hiring manager screen.

Treat a no as a fast, respectful no

Candidates will forgive a rejection; they remember silence. Send the decision within a few days, and keep it short and unambiguous. See how to give candidate interview feedback.

Where Interviewer Mode fits

Disclosure: we make CoPilot Interview, which includes Interviewer Mode for the hiring side and a real-time assistant used by candidates. We have an interest in you using the first, and our view of the second is that interviews should be designed to measure something an assistant cannot fake. Weigh the advice below accordingly.

Frequently asked questions

What questions should I ask in a phone screen?

What they are working on now, one depth question about something they built, what they are looking for that they are not getting now, and their timeline and compensation range. Four questions is the right number for 30 minutes once you leave room for the candidate's own.

How long should a phone screen be?

Thirty minutes. The decision a phone screen makes — is this person worth an hour of the team's time — does not get more accurate with sixty, and longer screens make scheduling harder for candidates who are employed.

Should I ask technical questions in a phone screen?

Ask one depth question about work they have done rather than a quiz. Technical trivia over the phone, with no shared screen and no thinking time, measures recall under awkward conditions rather than engineering ability.

Should I discuss salary in a phone screen?

Yes, state the range. Discovering in a final round that your range and the candidate's expectations never overlapped wastes your team's time and considerably more of the candidate's. Most candidates read a stated range as a sign of a well-run process.