5 Powerful Tips For English Language Job Interviews

Do you have a job interview coming up in English and English is your second language? Here are 5 tips that you should remember to help you ace it and give you the best chance of coming out with the job.

1 Prepare

The most important thing to do before any job interview, whether it is in English or not is to have an idea of what you want to say, why you want the job and to familiarize yourself with details about the company.

So to prepare you might want to go to the company’s website and read about: Who leads the company? Who works there? What is the structure of the company? What is its mission statement. If the website is in English that’s even better, take notes and remember to write down any key vocabulary or buzz words.

Another way to prepare is to get an idea of what the interview will be like, who will be interviewing you? What are their names? If it is a Zoom interview then make sure you have great lighting, camera and sound. If you know what the interview might be like before the big day then you can start to visualize and mentally prepare for the experience.

Try to think of what kinds of questions they will ask and write them down, also write down your own possible answers!!

2 Your English is probably better than you think

As a teacher I find that even advanced students really put themselves down about their English, the word we have for this in English is self-deprecating, that’s where you say "Oh my english is so bad", "I’m sorry for my english" or "My grammar is terrible" and I would really encourage you to stop saying that, not matter what your level is.

Language learning is a journey of making mistakes, and I have to tell you that no one ever learns their second language perfectly, and that’s totally ok! So understand that it’s completely normal to make the occasional error or miss the odd word here and there.

Start saying the opposite! Go around telling people you are a great english speaker, you're advanced! You can speak to anyone! And particularly tell yourself that. Because language learning is something that should be respected, and you should respect yourself for speaking a second language as well as you do!

And then go into the job interview with that attitude, you will be much more confident!

3 Surround Yourself With English

From now, I mean right now, until the job interview you should surround yourself with English.

Start watching a TV show on Netflix and binge it, watch every episode one after the other in English with English subtitles. I recommend Cobra Kai, Queer Eye, Stranger Things and Sex Education.

When you go to the supermarket listen to podcasts like Today Explained, The Daily, or NPR Life Kit.

And get onto iTalki and get a cheap English tutor, or if you want the best, sign up for one of my online classes!

All of this will prime your brain in English, it will be an English speaking brain when you go into the interview, because if I try to speak German or Spanish without doing this… my confidence and fluency is much, much lower!

4 Relax and let your personality shine - if you can’t think of a word then forget it, and say it in a different way

Number 4 is related to tip 3, and that is to just relax, one of the key things that interviewers are looking for is a person who has a good personality, someone they can imagine working with in their company; if you are nervous and insecure… they probably won’t want to work with you.

So any trick that you have to be more confident and happy, use it. Wear clothes that make you feel comfortable and confident, sing along to a motivational song before the interview.

And as far as English goes, be confident. If you can’t think of a word, just forget and immediately think of a different way to say it, there’s always more than one way to say anything.

5 Be prepared for anything

Tip 5 is to be prepared for anything, maybe the interviewer will be a different person than you expected, maybe they won’t ask you any of the questions that you rehearsed, maybe they won’t end up speaking English to you at all! You never know, so although it’s good to prepare and have an idea of how things might be, also know that they could be totally different and be prepared for that. What I’m trying to say is relax, be confident and be yourself!