Should I be worried that a phone interview lasted 10 minutes?

[Cwadda]

Hi all,

I started my job search a couple of weeks ago and had my first phone interview today! I was told that I should plan about 30 minutes for the call. I feel like I answered all the questions well, but the call only lasted around 10-11 minutes.

It seemed like the interviewer sort of rushed through the questions - was this just a quick phone screening to confirm my experience matched my resume? When I offered questions about the job description, the interviewer said she wouldn't particularly know all the details, that any questions would be better suited for the hiring manger directly. I'm supposed to hear back in the next 1-2 weeks. Until then, I won't stop looking and applying for more opportunities.

At any rate, guess it's already over but am curious to get others' perspective. Or your experiences with phone interviews.

Thanks!

[DS]

At the end of the call did you ask about "next steps" or when to expect a follow-up? That usually is a good indicator of how it went.

[matchewed]

I can think of a few circumstances that would make the initial phone interview short. Perhaps the person performing it is just a screener going through a longer list of people and roughly verifying that people have the skills required (much like you said).

I wouldn't be worried really. There are more interviews out there to be had even if it did go south for some reason.

If you did want to see if there was something to improve upon then you could write down the questions asked during the phone call and review your answers and plan out future answers to those questions. All the while taking the standard advice for interviews and apply them to the answers for next time.

[SKL-HOU]

I had an in-person interview for a senior level engineering job that lasted less than half an hour. When I called the 3rd party recruiter back, he seemed to panic (because it was too short) but they told me at the interview they would hire me on the spot but have to go through paperwork (a multinational, 22k employee, publicly traded company so not a mom and pop shop). So the 3rd party recruiter called them and asked what they thought. He was very surprised and called me back and told me they loved me and they were working frantically to get me an offer (I had another pending offer). I ended up not taking the offer (a stupid decision) but what I learned is the length of the interview does not mean anything. I say it doesn't necessarily mean bad news but only you know from the tone of the conversation.

[StetsTerhune]

Sounds like it was just a screen by an HR recruiter, so I don't think you should read anything into it one way or the other. Let me tell you about the last conversation I had with an HR recruiter:
Call was set up for 10am for 30 minutes, didn't get a call until 10:20 (I had called and emailed during those 20 minutes). She was hugely apologetic, said she'd only take up 10 minutes of my time, it was clear from my resume that they'd bring me in, she just needed to document that she'd had this conversation and confirmed that I met the qualifications. She went through her checklist of questions, and that was that.