Regardless of whether you’re being interviewed because they trust your best friend’s sister’s recommendation or not, even if it turned out you weren’t a super fit for the current job, you could be considered for another job where you DO fit, so it’s still a great opportunity to do your best, especially considering that you’re interested in HR, and this would provide double the learning opportunity for you.
Tips for phone interviews include being dressed professionally, so it makes it easier for you to feel that you’re in an interview and act accordingly. Do your best to make sure no one interrupts you and that you’re in a place without background noise that will distract you or will amuse the interviewer (negatively). If an interruption does inevitably happen, I recommend mentioning it briefly to let the interviewer know why you are acting distracted, because otherwise you might come off as strange. You don’t need to explain every detail, you just have to say, “Somebody walked in and distracted me, I apologize for not having heard your question, or for briefly forgetting what you asked. I did everything possible to avoid interruptions, but…” It’ll also help you be more natural again.
Personally, I recommend standing up to project energy in your voice.
Sometimes the first phone interviews are short and for screening initially (questions such as how much do you want to earn, what kinds of jobs do you like, are you available part-time or full-time are useful even for placing you properly in a database, and can save lots of time for the next interviewer, who might possibly be more experienced), so if you are open to other types of jobs within the company, if there’s a chance to do so, it might be good to mention it…
Definitely demonstrate how your client service skills and above all attitude will benefit the company. Find out what skills are needed for HR, and when possible, try to find similar activities you’ve done in other places. For example, if that HR representative job were to include the job task of organizing events for employees, and you never did that at work, but you did that successfully in your personal life, you could mention that. It’s a good idea for you to write those experiences down so that you can portray them the way you need to. Sometimes the job description is available on the company’s website. That would help you especially, because if you haven’t worked in that field before, if you at least know certain basic terms that they use or know approximately what the job entails, you might sound like you know a bit more….