English for job interview – why is it bad English?

Yes I know you probably found this page using the search tag English for job interview.  But I’m here to tell you that it’s not good English. Yes, we all may use a shortened version of English when searching the internet – it’s more efficient after all – but if you don’t know what’s wrong with the English, read on.

If not English for job interview, then what?

The basic idea is that you need to use:

An article (the/a) – “I need to practise my English for a job interview in I have coming soon.”

“I have a job interview with an international firm and it’s going to be conducted in English.”

Or, a plural – “English for job interviews,” that would make a better heading.

Or, a possessive pronoun – “I need to use English for my job interview“

Or maybe it’s different situation: “Our company has just been bought by a European company, and we’ve been told we have to speak in English with our new colleagues.”

OK, I get it – another thing I don’t know! But how about telling me how I can improve my English and not only prepare for a job interview in future, but improve my English communication for the job itself?

Good question. I’m glad you asked.

Well to use an English idiom: Rome wasn’t built in day. Give yourself time, and start with…

Awareness

Finding out there’s something else you don’t know can be frustrating. I understand. But it’s the first step to improvement.

Accuracy is not actually the most important thing! That’s why it comes last in this list. The first is awareness.

Record yourself regularly

This is why I always recommend recording yourself as much as possible and as regularly as possible.

Make sure you listen to yourself, but not immediately. Wait at least a day. This will give you detachment and allow you to be objective when assessing yourself.

Don’t like the sound of your own voice? Get over it! It’s simply one of the best habits (more on this later) you can build when it comes to language awareness and monitoring.

Compare your present self to your past self (not others) to see how far you have come

Yes, listen to feedback from professional English teachers and coaches, but there’s nothing better than listening to yourself. Then you can compare your own voice to others. But beware of comparisons to others. The best kind of comparison is with yourself, how you were yesterday, the day before, last month last year, then you can see how far you’ve come – that will really boost your motivation if you have been practising consistently – but more of that later.  you have a coach he/she can point out how things should sound and then you can compare your recorded self to the ‘correct’ pronunciation.

Acceptance

Be OK with where you’re at

Don’t beat yourself up, but be humble and honest with where you are at the moment.

Acceptance is saying:

“OK, I am at this stage at this moment in time, and this is exactly where I should be. Now, what can I do to progress from this point towards where I want to be?”  

Dave Stirling

This is not the same as resignation. Resignation is where you throw your hands up and say:

“I’ve tried X for Y amount of time, but I still can’t get any better, so I may as well give up and just accept that I’m not good.”

You need to put your ego aside. If you say “I should be better than I am because I have been learning English for x number of years” – you’re beating yourself up, you’re not allowing things to be – it’s unlikely you’ll have real awareness of where you are, you will find I harder to get to where you want to be.

Ego also tells us that we are above certain training methods or learning certain basic things, even though a qualified professional may be telling us that we should strengthen this foundation.

Can you imagine a sportsperson or martial artist who refuses to do basic skills training because they claim they are too good for that? You wouldn’t expect them to do well, would you? It’s no different when it comes to learning a foreign language – in your case, English.

Motivation

If you want to get better, it helps to know the reasons why you want to get better.

For a deeper look at this, see my article Start with WHY

If your answer to “What do you want?” is “I want to improve my English.”

Then the next question is :

How will you know when you’ve got it? What will you see, hear and feel?

Maybe you will answer something like: “I will hear myself speaking English in longer sentences with fewer pauses and expressing myself with more advanced vocabulary. I will understand most of what people are saying as long as they speak clearly and not too fast. I will feel more confident in situations which require me to speak English.”

Great, we’re getting a clearer picture now. The next question is:

Why is that important to you?

Maybe: “It will allow me to apply for more jobs that use English, get offered and then pass interviews.”

What will that give you?

Could be: “The opportunity to earn more money and travel to interesting places.”

What will that do for you?

Perhaps: “It will allow me to support my family and follow my dreams.”

Now, these are just my ideas. You need to answer these questions honestly for yourself. This will allow you to dig deeper into your inner motivation and align your actions when you have to do the work

The beauty of finding these inner values is that you can start to set goals which mean something to you. Meaning is everything, it gives us energy and purpose and so much more besides. They are not made-up targets we have to hit (although those are better than none at all)

Enjoyment

Enjoy the process

“Find a job you enjoy doing, and you will never have to work a day in your life.”

― Mark Twain

When you enjoy what you are doing, you are more likely to stick with it and become better. You don’t have to be rolling on the floor laughing, or your heart pumping fast with adrenaline-fuelled excitement – although those things are great.

It can mean the quiet satisfaction you get from:

The important thing is you actually enjoy it, you don’t hate it. Find things you like to do, and do them in English – even if it’s watching Korean drama – use English subtitles. Much better would be watching English dramas, romantic comedies, period dramas, history, action, detective series etc.

Whatever it is. Search for podcasts about topics you like – there are literally hundreds of thousands. I you have favourite singers, learn their songs, search for interviews with them. If you love sports do the same with your favourite sports people if they speak English.

If we start setting goals as above, the challenge of achieving those goals will be more enjoyable. The feeling of accomplishment from achieving them. But again, beware the inner tyrant who will start to sneer and laugh if you don’t reach your goals as quickly as you thought/ said/ promised you would.

Practise / building habits / Consistency

A friend and mentor of mine, Carl Pate, says in his book Making S#!t Happen, “consistency is the secret sauce that you need to spread over everything you do, and this will change your world forever.” Well, there’s a reason he’s my mentor; I couldn’t agree more, and it applies to learning and speaking English as much as anything else.

Taking your English to a higher level is a challenge for most people – there’s no getting around it. So, as well as making your practice enjoyable, make it consistent. Forming good habits by starting small, taking it easy, and building up gradually. Make a commitment to yourself to do at least 5 minutes of practice every day. You’ll probably end up doing more, but you don’t have to. Put it in your calendar or diary – something you can check – and when you see it you won’t be filled with a sense of dread because it’s so easy to do. Just do it!

Think of going to the gym – just turning up in your sports kit each day is half the work. First build frequency, then duration, then intensity. In the beginning, you won’t notice much difference in the results. But it’s when you get into a routine that the real change will come. We all want to rush to the finishing line, but you need patience. It’s like compound interest on money invested: at first the changes are small but over time the results are huge – as long as you keep your money in the bank!

Finally, make these habit easy for yourself, put your books out on the table, save your languages apps, make shortcut, put them on your home page of your computer, tablet or phone. This will keep your goals in sight and in mind. It will be harder to avoid them than to simply sit down and do the work.

Accuracy / Improvement

In the end, accuracy is important. A piece of writing with no mistakes looks professional and is a pleasure to read. Listening to someone speak clearly with confidence, we assume they are a native speaker or they may have lived in that country.

However, in our English language learning journey, perfectionism often gets in the way of progress. It’s better to constantly aim to improve, that’s not quite the same as aiming to constantly improve. 

Although this latter is a great ideal, it’s not dynamic – it doesn’t allow for the fact that you may get interrupted, or temporarily knocked off course and then come back in and start improving again. The other is likely to get annoyed or despondent and this takes us back to talking about how things ‘should’ be.

This then circles back to awareness. Allow yourself to be aware of your progress and your achievements. Although we now know more, we may see how much further we have got to go.

This is the challenge of education and knowledge in a field. That was what made Socrates so wise: he acknowledges that his knowledge was limited and that there was a lot he didn’t know.