All my best advice on what to say at your job interview. I will tell you how to answer the most common job interview questions. I’ll give you the grammatical structures to use when answering questions about your work experience, and also share with you vocabulary and phrases that will impress your interviewer.
I recommend you prepare for your job interview by learning phrases you can repeat in your interview and also by practising your answers to these common questions. Get a friend to ask you the questions and make sure that you answer them in English! You can follow my advice about how to answer job interview questions whether you are looking for a job in an English-speaking country or you are being interviewed in English for a job in your home country. Good luck with your interview – I wish you success! If you want more help, watch my video on how to write your CV. Remember: there is no 'try’!
Once you’ve finished the lesson, take the quiz here: http:/www.engvid.com/what-to-say-at-your-job-interview
TRANSCRIPT
Hi, everyone. I’m Jade. What we’re talking about today is job interview English. So, in this lesson, I’m going to give you some phrases that you can use in a job interview, and I’ll also be giving you… We’ll also be looking at what grammar you should be using to answer common job interview questions. So I’m going to break it down so you know what to expect when you have that job interview in English, maybe for the first time, or maybe you’ve already had a couple of interviews in English but you just want to improve your performance.
So let’s start by talking about before the interview. So when you get there, there’s always, like, that bit of small talk. Maybe you find it awkward, maybe you’re a pro at small talk, but I thought I’d just give you some phrases so that you’ve got something to say, at least. So, when you get there, it’s polite to say something like: „Thanks for inviting me to interview.” If you feel like initiating small talk, you could say something like: „Is the position based in this office?” or „building”, wherever you are. You might also want to say: „Oh, how many people work here?” Just sort of general things, nothing personal going on there.
Or you might make an observation about what you see about the building or the workplace. You could say: „The offices are impressive.” Now, clearly, if the building isn’t very nice, and there isn’t anything remarkable about it, then I probably wouldn’t say something like this. It’s better to make no observation than say one that’s not true, or one that sounds a bit strange because the place is a real dump. You don’t want to say it’s great in your phrase. But maybe the area’s nice, so then you could say: „What a great location!” This is an exclamation. You say it with some kind of enthusiasm. Or you might say, as you’re walking to the interview room: „Ah, I see you have an open plan office.” That means where everybody works together in the same room. Or you might say: „I see you have a staff canteen.” That’s where you get your food. Okay? So, all suggestions for general small talk.
The interviewer may, however, initiate small talk with you, in which case, general things they like to talk about in England… Our… Our favourite topics of small talk are the weather, so you could say something like: „It’s chilly today.” That means it’s a bit cold. Or mild. „Mild” is… „Mild” is when the weather is better than you would expect for that time of year. So if it’s winter and it’s mild, it’s not as cold as you would expect it to be. Yep. So we love to talk about the weather, you know that about British people.
Did you also know we like to talk about the traffic or the tube delays and things like that? So, perhaps they’ll say: „How was the traffic? How was your journey here?” You can tell them about your journey. Say: -„Oh, it wasn’t bad.” -„How was your journey?” -„Not bad.” That means it was okay. Or you could say: „It didn’t take me too long.” It didn’t take me too long. Now, just a tip: You don’t want to say: „It was a nightmare; it took me hours”, because they’ll probably want to employ someone who can get to the job easily.
