Lots of research shows that the biggest impact in spoken-word communication is visual. Some researchers say it's as much as three-quarters of the total. Yet on the phone we don't have any of that. Our voice has to do all the work.

If we want people at the other end to form a good impression of us, we need to give more thought to business phone calls than we do when we're just chatting to our friends.
TIP

^^Back up

There are two main possibilities.

• The job advert asks you to ring the company for an application form.
• Or, usually a little later in the process, you have to ring up and arrange a time for an interview.

Either of these cases can be entirely straightforward - just a matter of getting a small administrative task done. But depending on who you speak to, there could also be questions of a sort you wouldn't otherwise expect until you fill in the application form or go for an interview.

These could be either factual - "what's your educational background?" - or human - "what interested you particularly about this job?"

It makes sense to be prepared before you make the call, just as you would before an interview.

For more information on factual and human questions, see Work skills - Being interviewed.

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The main difficulty here is not knowing who a call is from until you've picked up the phone. That means that each call ought to be treated as if it's a business call until you find out otherwise.

So, for example, don't let it ring for too long, and then answer either with the number or your name. Just ‘hello' might be OK for your friends, but business people expect more information when someone picks up the phone.

You also want to keep a pen and paper close to the phone. It's not very impressive if you have to say: "Can you hold on a moment while I just get something to write with?"
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