Conversation: Job Interviews in English

This blog post is a collection of useful resources related to job interviews in English. All of this material comes from our English for the Workplace course.

Conversation: Job Interviews in English

Warm-up Questions

In this post we’ll be featuring some great videos to help you with job interviews in English! You can consolidate the information in the videos with some role-play exercises.

Do you remember your first job interview? How did it go? How did you feel? Did you get the job?

When was the last time you had a job interview? What was it for? How did it go?

Have you had a lot of job interviews?

What examples of questions that you’ve been asked in interviews can you think of?

Have you ever been asked an inappropriate question in an interview? Did you answer it?

Have you ever conducted a job interview? What tips would you give?

Common Interview Questions

When you are preparing for. a job interview, there are many “standard” or common questions that you should prepare for. Here are some of the most frequently asked jopb interview questions. Think about how you would answer each of them. Which would be easy for you to answer? Which would be the most difficult ?

Tell us a little about yourself.

How did you find out about this position?

What are your strength and weaknesses?

Tell us about a time that you overcame an obstacle or difficulty.

What are your career goals?

Where do you see yourself in 5 / 10 years from now?

Why do you want this position?

Why do you want to work for this company?

Do you have any questions?

Useful Videos about Job Interview in English from around the Web

here are a selection of videos that you may find useful when preparing for a job interview in English.

Useful Lexis for Job Interview Answers

It was my responsibility to…

I was responsible for

I collaborated with… to…

I took the initiative to…

I lead my team / department on…

I resolved this situation by…

This created measurable results such as…

The STAR Method for Answering Behavioural Interview Questions

The STAR method is a way of structuring answers to job interview questions about your past experiences, challenges and achievements. Using this method to answer questions systematically will help you to provide a clear and comprehensive answer to challenging questions.

Situation

Describe when and where your anecdote took place.

Task

What was your role, what was the problem or challenge that you faced?

Action

The STAR method can help you to remember how to answer an interview question well!

What did you do to overcome the problem, address the situation?

Result

What was the result of the action that you took? Try to give facts and figures if possible.

Check out this article from The Guardian about the Star Technique.

This excellent video explains how to talk about salary expectations in the interview.

Check out this guide to common interview question with some great suggestions for answers!

...and this one!

…and another!

…and here are some weird interview questions?

How useful are job interviews?

This article in The Guardian argues that maybe interviews aren’t as useful as we think, what’s your reaction to this?

Many students have told me that they don’t feel comfortable talking about salary at interview. Is this a cultural taboo? In British culture we don’t have a problem with talking about salary, in fact, salary is usually advertised on the job listing.

is talking about salary something that you feel comfortable with? How would you bring up to he subject?

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