You have been asked to conduct a phone interview about an available position with a company you would love to work for! But. . . you have a hearing loss and you are nervous and unsure about how you will perform over the phone.
What do you do? How do you handle this?
Of course it depends on your type of hearing loss, your personality, and how you typically communicate with others using the phone.
In the past, I will let the person doing the phone interview know that I have a hearing loss. I have been lucky to have people understand and ask if there is anything they can do to help (if there is no way we can do an interview in person or via webcam). I thought the phone interviews I did went well. There were a few times I had to ask the interviewers to repeat themselves, which was not an issue, because they understood that I have a problem with hearing.
But, I think now with the neck loop and phone captioning system, it should be a lot easier to deal with phone interviews, but I will still tell the person on the phone that I have a hearing loss. I think letting others know is very important. And if they don't understand and are unwilling to accommodate you, then you probably would not want to work for them anyway.
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What do you do? How do you handle this?
Of course it depends on your type of hearing loss, your personality, and how you typically communicate with others using the phone.
In the past, I will let the person doing the phone interview know that I have a hearing loss. I have been lucky to have people understand and ask if there is anything they can do to help (if there is no way we can do an interview in person or via webcam). I thought the phone interviews I did went well. There were a few times I had to ask the interviewers to repeat themselves, which was not an issue, because they understood that I have a problem with hearing.
But, I think now with the neck loop and phone captioning system, it should be a lot easier to deal with phone interviews, but I will still tell the person on the phone that I have a hearing loss. I think letting others know is very important. And if they don't understand and are unwilling to accommodate you, then you probably would not want to work for them anyway.
(e
in the past ,I have let family take the phone and they give her the interview appt. date and time.
ReplyDeleteI always told them because I used a CapTel - which is GREAT - but there's still a delay and I didn't want them to think I was slow or anything. So I just told them upfront about my hearing loss (just briefly so I could explain about the delay on the phone) and then I moved on with the interview. I didn't want to spend too much time talking about the hearing loss because I didn't want to distract or deter them from hiring me, but I also didn't want to appear deceptive, you know? In the end, I felt that "surprising" them with my hearing loss in the interview (if I had one after speaking to them on the phone) was not in my best interest. It worked out okay for me as I've been with the same company for four years now and my employer is incredibly supportive.
ReplyDeleteBut like you said, it depends on the situation... you just have to figure out for yourself what works best for you.
I just give up. if there's something that has to be done over the phone, I can't do it. I always try to do everything in person. If I go some place and they tell me I can't come in person, I have to do it over the phone, then I give up.
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