How to Prepare for a Job Interview In English (Tried & Tested!)

By Robby

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Video Script Below:

Hi guys! It’s Robby here from EnglishHarmony.com and welcome back to my video blog! In today’s video we’re going to talk about job seeking and I chose this particular subject because I received an email off of one of my blog readers where he talks about his struggles with job interviews.

And it happens so that I’m actually looking for a job at the moment, right? I attended an IT course for 9 months straight. Now I’m a fully qualified PC technician and I’m trying to kick start my career in IT as a matter of fact.

So now I’m firing off a number of job applications every day and my goal is to attend as many job interviews as possible to find the perfect job. And basically this email is also very good because the person in question has described all the typical fluency issues that most of our foreign English speaking counterparts experience all over the world.

And it ties in with the whole job seeking aspect. And I have to tell you that most of my blog readers are interested in finding a better job or get the so much wanted promotion in their current job. And obviously by improving spoken English skills that would – that dream would come true, right? So it’s very relevant to all of you guys, right?

Now, let me read the email and I’m going to comment on each section as I see fit. So basically he’s saying that prior to looking for a job there weren’t many situations in his life when he had to communicate in English, only a few occasions and somehow he managed it. And that’s the way it was in my life pretty much, right? I thought that my English skills were decent and those relatively few chats that I had with some random English speaking people went kind of okay. So I thought that my spoken English fluency was just great, right?

If You’re Not Prepared, the Simplest Question May Totally Confuse You!

And then he says “For the first time I went to an interview after getting my degree.” So after graduating from the university, this person goes for a job interview, for a job in a call center, right? That’s something that I’m very familiar with. I worked in two different call centers previously. “And I was so embarrassed that I wasn’t fluent in English and got rejected. The question was simply “Tell me something about yourself.” but I was afraid to speak and I replied in a few broken sentences with grammatical errors in it…

And this is so typical. I was pretty much the same, okay? And more interestingly, he writes that “Normally I don’t make many grammatical errors in writing but when I’m speaking, words don’t even come out of my mouth.” That’s typical as well, right? “And I find some others who are all attending interviews with me they’re bad in grammar but they’re confident in talking.” And then he goes on to say that if he was asked to write the answer, he would have written a page at least but when it comes to speaking he can’t talk.

If You Were Asked to Write the Answer – You’d Have no Problems!

So the answer is first of all, why is it happening? It’s all because obviously you’ve been learning the English language primarily based on textbook studies, writing, reading, all that kind of stuff. So it’s all basically passive. Well, writing isn’t really passive but you know what I mean. It doesn’t involve speaking, right?

So your speech is simply not developed. And it’s totally natural. It’s not a mental issue or anything like that. You’ve developed your writing to a good level which your e-mail clearly displays. Your writing is brilliant, right? But just because you can write doesn’t mean you can speak. They are two different aspects of the same larger thing which is the English language skills. You can write but if you haven’t done much speaking, it’s only natural that you can’t speak.

You don’t have to be thinking, what’s wrong with me? Why can I write and why can’t I speak? The answer is simple.

Because they’re two different skillsets!

Writing is your ability to construct sentences in your head, string the words together and put them down on paper, right? Or when you’re typing on the screen of a computer for that matter.

But when you speak it’s a completely different process. Your English speech patterns have to be wired in your head, in your mouth. And you have to be able to speak without much thinking. It’s completely different from writing. And it’s only natural that you lack in that department if you haven’t done much practice, right? And the only key to that is to do a lot of spoken English practice. And then you’ll get better at it, right?

And yeah, so what else is he saying in the email? Now, he basically wants to get a job within a month and he asks whether I can give some advice. So here’s what you have to do. And listen up, everyone who is looking for a job right now and wants to nail the job interview; the key to doing a successful job interview is preparation.

Preparation Involving Spoken English Practice is the KEY to a Successful Job Interview!

Basically, what you’ve got to do is you have to come up with a list of questions, right? You can do a Google search. There’s hundreds of websites that will give you the typical questions asked during a job interview. You have to write them down. Say 20 to 30 questions. And then you have to write down your answers, okay?

But you have to write as if you were speaking. You don’t have to write in a very formal matter but just provide an answer, right? The normal kind of conversational type of answer. And here’s a resource that will come in handy. Click on this link that will take you to my blog where you can find 45 must-know phrases to land a job. And there are very, very useful collocations and word combinations and phrases to be used during a job interview, right?

So use these phrases to answer those questions and then do spoken English practicing whereby you pose as the interviewer and the interviewee in the same person. Ideally get it recorded on a camcorder, just the way I do my recording right now. Position a camcorder in front of you and then you kind of read out the question and then you pretend that you’re actually attending the actual interview and that the interviewer sits in front of you and then provide an answer.

First, when you do the first repetition, you will be looking at the sheet from time to time but make sure that you learn those specific collocations, specific phrases, right? Actually, you have to memorize them beforehand, that’s the first step. You have to memorize all those phrases that you took from the list, from the link that I just gave you. And obviously you can do some research on top of that and anything that is worth memorizing, very specific phrases, word combinations, memorize them first.

Keep Doing the Mock Interview Till You Achieve Total Speech Automation!

And then do the first round of the interview. Provide your answer but obviously you’re not going to memorize the whole lot. You just provide an answer and have a quick peek on the sheet to make sure that you’re on the right track and then do it once, do it 2 times, 3 times, 4 times. Do it a 100 times.

Do it – you don’t care about how many times you do it but you have to get it right. You do it for days, for weeks, right? You have to do it constantly because obviously you’ll be attending a number of interviews. And you have to be completely comfortable with providing those types of answers. You have to be able to provide them without any thinking whatsoever.

So that when you walk into the real interview, obviously the stress levels are going to be very high and you’re going to be making a few mistakes here and there but at least speech automation is going to be there. All those long hours you would have spent with yourself recording the speech on a camcorder and then coming back obviously you’d be reviewing to see what needs to be improved and all those sort of things.

All that will insure that no matter the stress levels, you will still deliver a fairly decent interview speech because just like I said the automation is going to be there in place. All those speech patterns are going to be wired in your head. And obviously you’re going to make a few mistakes here and there but it’s no big deal. Don’t worry about it. Just focus on the process, on the speech, focus on delivering what you’ve already been talking about with yourself in comfort of your own room hundreds of times before.

Preparation is the key. It actually doesn’t matter whether it’s English or some other language, even your native language. If you go for an interview, for the very first time without any preparation whatsoever, you may as well fail being a native speaker of that language.

So it doesn’t really matter that it’s the second language or a third for that matter, you have to do preparation. It’s the key. And that is the best answer that anyone could ever possibly give to you. So you better bear that in mind and start doing the preparation right now. Just like I said, click on this link, take all these industry specific collocations and phrases and use them when creating the answers for your job interview questions. Okay?

So if you have any questions and comments, you’re welcome to publish them in the comment section below. I’ll chat to you soon my friends and bye-bye!

Robby

P.S. Would you like to find out why I’m highlighting some of the text in red? Read this article and you’ll learn why it’s so important to learn idiomatic expressions and how it will help you to improve your spoken English!

P.S.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out my English Harmony System HERE!

P.S. Are you serious about your spoken English improvement? Check out the English Harmony System HERE!