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  • Interviewers know if youve prepared for a job interview or not

  • and if you haven’t prepared, you probably won’t get the job.

  • One of the most important things to do before a job interview is to practice answering interview questions.

  • Youll have better answers and youll be more relaxed,

  • opening the door to a greater connection with the person interviewing you.

  • Today were going to sit down with three experts who will talk you though common interview questions,

  • how to answer them, body language, and some Do’s an Donts of interviewing.

  • This is a long video because there’s a lot to cover.

  • Youll learn how to talk about transitions between jobs, what to say if youve been fired,

  • what to say when youre not sure how to answer a question,

  • the right way to follow up, the right body language, and much more.

  • Being prepared WILL get you the job.

  • At the end of the video, there will be a lesson for my non-native English speaking students on vocal tone.

  • You may be absolutely wonderful at what you do, and have a great cover letter and resume.

  • But interviewing is its own separate skill.

  • Cindy has hired hundreds of people for the non-profits she ran in New York City.

  • Now she works as a recruiter and she interviews people all day.

  • She says, before your interview, it is extremely important.

  • To practice your interviewing skills.

  • Do mock interviews because it makes you more comfortable,

  • and the more comfortable you are in an interview, the more likely you are to have a connection with somebody.

  • If you walk in nervous, and you're not yourself,

  • then the interview doesn't get to see who you are, which means that they may miss something.

  • You don’t want the interviewer to miss anything about how fabulous you are.

  • Everyone I spoke to stressed practicing.

  • Laura is a career advisor at a prestigious American college.

  • The most important thing is to prepare as much as possible.

  • Practising your interview ahead of time in front of a mirror with a friend.

  • Steve is a small business owner who does a lot of hiring.

  • I asked him what makes a good first impression at the beginning of an interview.

  • They are anticipating that they're going to be asked some questions.

  • Some standard questions across the board or during an interview process.

  • And if they have good answers for those, what I mean by good is that they're they've thought about these,

  • they know how to answer them, then to me, that feels like, okay this person's, this person's been aware,

  • and is prepared for... prepared for this interview.

  • Employers CAN tell when youve prepared: your answers are clearer, more interesting, more thorough.

  • And they appreciate that.

  • If you haven’t prepared for the interview, theyre probably going to question if youre really prepared for the job.

  • In the next three videos that follow this one, well study mock interviews

  • and discuss how you can put together you own best answers for common interview questions.

  • For the rest of this video, well continue to hear from Cindy, Laura and Steve.

  • Theyre giving you insider information: what does an employer want to see in an interview?

  • First, it’s common for employers to ask you to share a little bit about yourself outside of your work life.

  • Why do they do this, and what are they looking for?

  • Does it matter if you prepare an answer to this one?

  • Yes. Listen to what Steve says.

  • We usually ask what other things do you do outside of work?

  • We're looking for what kind of well-roundedness are you.

  • Of a person are you, and even what other activities are you involved with?

  • What might you be involved with within your community?

  • And more of that giving back to the community kind of a way.

  • But oftentimes, that'll lead to additional questions where, okay, we've got maybe a common interest,

  • and all of a sudden, you're going down a path of asking a whole bunch of different other questions.

  • Have you ever asked someone this question and they really

  • didn't have anything else that felt like their thing that they could talk about ?

  • Definitely.

  • Had situations where they were the reply was: well, I sit on my couch, and watch tv, you know.

  • It's something that's....It's some... That's another activity, all right, but it's,

  • for me, it's not, doesn't feel like it's a real one, exciting one, or one that, if I were in that interview position,

  • I would say that. That would be my response.

  • So yeah, we've had...We've had people that are just like: well, I...

  • I don't know and I just I just kind of work. I work all day.

  • And those people probably would have had an answer if they thought about it ahead of time.

  • Yeah, that's true.

  • So it's all about being prepared.

  • Right. Right. If you had thought about that beforehand I'm sure those applicants wouldn't have said:

  • I just kind of sit...I sit at my sit on my couch and watch tv.

  • There’s nothing wrong with loving TV, but think of a more exciting way to say it. “I’m a huge TV buff”, for example.

  • DO have an answer fortell me about yourself’, but DON’T get too personal.

  • Many interviews start with two general questions.

  • One being: tell me about yourself, a lot of people hate that question, but a lot of people use it.

  • And be prepared for that.

  • Tell a little bit about yourself. And what usually they're asking for is not to tell your resume,

  • they're asking for you to say a little bit about yourself, personally.

  • Like what, what would be, I mean, personally, there are so many things.

  • Oh I have two kids, or I love opera.

  • Like, is there any one thing that you think stay away from that? Or...How would you answer that?

  • I mean, yeah, I would stay away from anything that's like

  • super personal, that would be weird to say to somebody that you don't know very well.

  • But I think personal is good and so I think the things you just said are really interesting.

  • Like, I live in...I live in richmond, I have two little girls, and we moved down, I used to work in a non-profit,

  • I've just now switched careers, like, whatever.

  • I mean, just something about yourself that gives them a little bit of context of who you are.

  • So like something that you would feel comfortable saying to somebody that you're sitting next to on the bus

  • or something?

  • Yeah. Yeah. Or that you've just met at a dinner party, or you know, something like that.

  • Short.

  • They're not asking you for a long answer.

  • The other thing that a lot of interviews will start with is that you do a walk-through of your resume.

  • Now were moving onto a major topic you need to prepare for an interview: walking through your resume.

  • Both Steve and Cindy said this is something they ask interviewees to do.

  • Bring several copies of the same resume you submitted for the job.

  • Keep one for your own reference and hand the rest out to the people interviewing you.

  • What does an employer want to hear in a walk-through of your resume?

  • So I would say: I would love you to walk me through your resume.

  • Talk, start at the beginning.

  • Talk through the roles that you've held, key responsibilities at those roles,

  • would love for you to highlight your key successes in each role,

  • one of the things I really want to understand is your transition, so as you move from role to role,

  • would love to understand what prompted you to leave one place and go to the other.

  • And then, you know, if your career was long, I would love for you to spend more time on your more recent stuff,

  • but start at the beginning because I want to get a sense of your full career arc.

  • I want to get a sense of how it all connects, how you got from, you know, at the beginning to where you are now.

  • And then depending on the role, sometimes I will also say,

  • you know, when you start getting to the place of your career where you are managing teams,

  • or supervising staff, let me know how many people, the construct of your team,

  • and if you're managing budgets, what size of a budget? So I can capture that information.

  • I'm happy to like, you know, stop you as you go along if you forget anything but that's what I'm looking for.

  • And do that in about 15 or 20 minutes.

  • And that's awesome because that is something that anyone can practice ahead of time,

  • and can really, you know, time themselves, make sure they're not rambling on too much with any one thing.

  • And something that people will often do, I mean, there's errors on both sides,

  • some people go so quickly and don't actually note the information that I asked,

  • that I have to go back and ask questions all the way through. That's sort of annoying.

  • And then the rambly is also really annoying.

  • So some people will start and they'll...

  • They'll pause after their first job and say like: am I giving you the right level of detail?

  • I love that because I don't want to interrupt people.

  • It's not, you know, it doesn't always feel good to do that especially when people are nervous,

  • and they're interviewing.

  • So it's always good to check in and say like: is that the detail that you want?

  • And somebody asks me, I may very well say: actually, you know, feel free to go a little more quickly,

  • or you didn't know XYZ.

  • Talking through your resume in this kind of detail

  • is something youre going to be able to do a lot more clearly if youve thought about it

  • and practiced it ahead of time.

  • One part of your resume that matters a lot to employers is timing.

  • Be prepared to talk about gaps in your work history, short tenures at jobs, and transitioning between jobs.

  • One of the things in particular that I'm looking for is is gaps in your work history.

  • If you're giving me dates of when you worked, and you have a one-year gap, I want to know why.

  • What's going on? What happened? Or didn't happen? Or why did, why is there a year off or six-month period off

  • on your work history? That's probably one of the bigger things that I'm looking at.

  • Transitions between jobs.

  • This is a really important piece.

  • A lot of workers they just care a lot about it

  • because they want to understand if you were asked to leave, you were fired,

  • if your very short job tenures on your resume, that's a red flag for a lot of organizations,

  • and actually could be a reason why you didn't get an interview.

  • But be prepared to talk about your transitions.

  • If you do get fired, figure out how do you want to talk about that.

  • And if you didn't, then talk about what was it that made you leave one organization and go to another.

  • And while you're doing that,

  • you want to make sure that you're never speaking badly about one of your jobs or organizations.

  • It's another flag that happens in a job interview.

  • And you know it's okay to talk about a rough transition, or a rough year,

  • but you want to do it very carefully,

  • in a way that you would feel comfortable that if somebody from that organization were there,

  • would, you know, generally understand and feel comfortable here.

  • If you are bad-mouthing an organization, or a previous boss, or anybody really, in a job interview,

  • that's gonna make people think it's possible that you would do the same about them, about the, you know, job.

  • Do prepare to talk through your resume, do prepare to talk about gaps in work or transitions between jobs,

  • but don’t ever talk badly about an organization or an employer you worked with in the past.

  • How can you gracefully talk about being fired?

  • Let's say I was fired from a job.

  • From your experience, what is a way that I can talk about that, that you feel okay about it?

  • I guess it depends on why I was fired, right?

  • It really does.

  • It does depend on the situation.

  • I mean ultimately, what hopefully you can talk about is a situation where there was just not a good fit

  • with an organization.

  • And to be able to explain why something wasn't a good fit,

  • and how that transition was done in a way that was really respectful on your side, if you were able to.

  • So, in other words, you know, we realized that that it wasn't the right fit,

  • at which point, I worked another two weeks, you know, to make sure that I helped with the transition.

  • And somebody's gonna dig into that.

  • What was it that wasn't a good fit for you?

  • Well, it wasn't a good fit because I...

  • You know, I just had my first baby,

  • this was a culture that required, you know, a lot of overtime.

  • I wasn't able to give it. Ultimately, my boss and I were able to sit down and have a conversation

  • about that, and we decided to, you know, part ways, sooner rather than later.

  • Okay. That's helpful.

  • If they don't ask you the direct question: did you get fired? Or they didn't ask you about your transitions, right?

  • Like, I wouldn't say you should offer it, if it's not being asked for.

  • If somebody says why did you leave that organization, then you need to be honest.

  • Talking about being fired without bad mouthing the organization or lying could be hard,

  • but if you work on it beforehand, youll likely be able to come up with a way to discuss this

  • that youre comfortable with that's also truthful.

  • Both Cindy and Steve talked about the balance of talking about your accomplishments without sounding arrogant.

  • So if someone would come in with confidence and humility,

  • that would maybe endear me a little more to that person and say, boy,

  • I think this person could probably fit in our organization.

  • So I feel like I understand how someone can present themselves with confidence.

  • Can you think of anything of that a person says or does that makes you sense humility in them?

  • >> I mean, that's sort of a tricky, tricky one. >> It really is.

  • I think not over promoting yourself,

  • listening, truly listening to the people that are you're interviewing with,

  • not going on and on, talking on and on about yourself ,about your compliment, accomplishments,

  • about everything that you've done,

  • how wonderful you are, but still being able to talk about these these accomplishments, and...

  • Yeah. It's a fine line. It's a little tricky. You have to be able to speak well about what you've done,

  • but then also know at what point it's gotten to be too much.

  • Yeah. Yep. Absolutely.

  • Cindy agrees.

  • She has a great tip on how to do this.

  • I think one of the most, like, noted

  • characteristics about somebody on the turnout side is somebody who is just a know-it-all,

  • overly confident, speaks very highly of themselves.

  • and again, like, it's tricky because part of the job interview process is talking about what you've done,

  • but being able to do so in a way that exhibits humility, super-important.

  • I have interviewed people who have amazing resumes, who, you know, have done amazing work,

  • who are more than qualified for a role, and I've decided not to advance them in the process

  • because culturally, they are not going to be a fit in an organization where humility is valued...

  • which is a lot of organizations.

  • Not all. But a lot.

  • Wow. So how can someone talk about their achievements in a way that feels humble and not cocky?

  • One of the ways I think people can do that is in truth, when we think about our accomplishments,

  • rarely, I might even say, never.

  • Are they actually solely our accomplishments?

  • So one of the ways that you can talk about that is to highlight the team that you

  • accomplished something with, and certainly, it's also important to note your role on that, you know, so

  • example I use earlier was raising a million dollars.

  • It is very unlikely that any one person raised a million dollars by themselves.

  • They had support in different ways.

  • So being able to say, you know, my role on the team was actually to be the one out, you know, doing the meetings,

  • etcetera, I had a great staff that supported me in doing that, did the research, you know,

  • we worked so hard all together, and that allowed us to accomplish this amazing goal.

  • That's a great point. And then it also highlights perhaps that you work well in a group,

  • and that you're team oriented, which is often qualities that someone's looking for.

  • Both Steve and Cindy mentioned humility.

  • It is a characteristic that many employers will care about.

  • Do be prepared to talk about your accomplishments,

  • but know how to frame them in a way so that doesn’t sound arrogant.

  • I aside fromtell me about yourselfand the resume walk-through,

  • I asked Steve what other questions he asks in interviews.

  • A couple of the regular questions are: how do you fit in within an organization?

  • What type of personality do you have?

  • So I'm asking that, I'm trying to get an idea of how they would fit into our culture, into our organization.

  • It can be helpful to know how to talk about yourself and your personality in an interview.

  • Laura actually suggested that some of her students take a personality test like the Meyers Briggs test.

  • This can give you something concrete that you can say about yourself,

  • and you can think ahead of time of how you might relate that to the job youre interested in

  • or the organization youre interviewing for.

  • She also talked about another test.

  • So the other assessments that we offer are the strengths quest

  • which generates your top five strengths out of 24 strengths.

  • And that's a great assessment for learning about what you have to offer,

  • in terms and language that you may not have used before,

  • which will be very helpful when talking to employers, or thinking about certain careers that might be a fit for you.

  • Okay, so even just knowing how to describe your strengths from this exam from this test,

  • would be useful in any job interview because it gives you the language to do that articulately.

  • That's right.

  • Especially if youre new to interviewing, taking a test like Meyers Briggs or the Strength Quest test

  • can give you the language you can use to describe yourself in an interview.

  • Steve mentioned a lot of what he’s looking for to learn in an interview is process.

  • He asks:

  • How do you deal with an upset customer?

  • And that can be asked in multiple ways, but how do you how do you handle conflict is kind of what I'm getting to,

  • but in our environment we're constantly dealing with customers,

  • so how do you deal with them when one customer may not, you know, feel like they haven't been treated fairly?

  • So I want to hear that process.

  • To me, that it's the same process over and over again with anyone,

  • and does that person know that process of how do you talk with them, how do you...

  • How do you not know when to not talk with them.

  • So that's, that's another big one that we ask.

  • There are lots of common interview questions you can find online.

  • As you think about how youll answer them, focus on specifics, on telling stories from your work history.

  • you want to be prepared with very specific examples from your past work history to answer.

  • if somebody says give me an example of when, what they want is a very specific example of when.

  • and when you say, well, you know like I manage people by doing X Y Z and like,

  • in this job, I did this, in this job, I did this, like, they want a very specific example.

  • it's competency-based, meaning, what you've done in the past is likely to be what you will do in the future,

  • and it's the best demonstration you can have of how you will act.

  • And so they don't want...

  • very few interviews these days are about what you will do, very few people will say:

  • how would you manage X Y Z?

  • Now, they may, toward the end, right, to get a sense of the way that you think strategically,

  • like there are things like that that happened, but but initially, they want to know what you've done in the past.

  • So you want to prepare ahead of time

  • to think about the questions that people ask and what is this specific example that you can talk about,

  • and practice those. And so if somebody says: tell me about a time that you got feedback from a boss.

  • What was the feedback, you know, what did you do with it?

  • How did you respond to it? And what was the results after?

  • Okay. So be very specific about all thing.

  • So what you're saying then is there was... So at this job, my... I was doing a performance review,

  • um, you know, annual performance, and the feedback that I got was that in my emails that I was sending,

  • I wasn't very clear in my subject line.

  • And so it wasn't easy for my boss to understand what it was that I was sending emails about.

  • This is actual feedback I got at one point in my career.

  • And my boss was like: I really need you to be more clear in your subject line, and so that was an easy one,

  • like I was more clear with my subject line, but they want that, like, specific feedback.

  • Laura also stresses having stories to go with common interview questions.

  • Predict what they might ask you.

  • And then come up with examples, or stories to go with your response.

  • Stories stick much more than just answering a question. So for example, if they tell you, or if they ask you:

  • tell me about a time you failed, or even tell me your greatest weaknesses,

  • instead of just saying: these are my weaknesses, having a story to go along with it, and then being able to say:

  • but here's how I've overcome those weaknesses, and so that there is a sort of happy outcome to that question.

  • So stories really stick and general vague answers really don't.

  • Do look up common interview questions and DO come up with specific examples

  • and detailed stories for your answers.

  • DON’T give vague or generic answers.

  • What should you do in an interview when you don’t know the answer to a question?

  • The interviewer thought of one you didn’t prepare.

  • Okay so what happens if someone asks you a question like that, or any question

  • and you're not sure how to answer it. Either you just can't think of one on the spot, you haven't prepared for that,

  • or it's something technical, and for whatever reason, you're not familiar enough to know how to answer it.

  • Are there ways people can say something like "I'm not sure" in a way that doesn't turn you off as an interviewer?

  • Actually, I don't mind at all when somebody says "I'm not sure."

  • what it says to me is you have confidence

  • in your ability to admit what you don't know,

  • and that is a really important characteristic for anybody that you want to have working with you.

  • So, of course, if they say "I don't know" the entire interview, they're not qualified for the job.

  • But I prefer somebody to say "I don't know", I'm gonna be able to tell anyway, likely,

  • that you're making something up, and you could say is, you know, I don't... I don't have an example for that,

  • or I haven't done that before, would it be helpful if I tell you, you know, what I think I would do?

  • Or like, actually, I don't have experience with that.

  • >> I would love to-- >> and leave it. And be done, right?

  • Like, like, if it's something very technical and you haven't done its, just say "I don't have an experience with that"

  • And that's okay. Like, yeah, I would love to learn. That would be something I'm really interested in.

  • But I wouldn't then ramble on making something up because that's kind of annoying and...

  • But I think saying "I don't know" is actually a...

  • It is helpful to know that you have the ability to do that.

  • I asked Laura what she tells students to say when they don’t know the answer to a question.

  • That's a really good question. Let me take a minute to think about it.

  • That's what you say?

  • That's one thing that you can answer is: let me just take a second to think about it...

  • And then you really have to take a second, you can't take 30 seconds or it starts to get really awkward.

  • But you can take a pause, and I often hear people doing that.

  • Another thing that you can say is: I can't think of that the answer right now,

  • but could we come back to that at the end of the interview?

  • At that point, you might be more relaxed, you might have thought of it,

  • something else that you've been asked might bring it up for you, and then if you really can't think of an answer,

  • what I would say is to focus on how you would go, how you would think about the response.

  • So a lot of employers are interested in not only what you say but how you're thinking about a problem,

  • and and they want to see your thought process.

  • So you could say: well, I don't know the answer to that, but here's the first thing I would do as I started thinking

  • about it, or here's the research that I would do in order to look into this.

  • And so you have an answer, though you really haven't answered the question.

  • You are showing them how your mind works and that you are willing to

  • think through something when you actually don't have the answer right off the bat.

  • >> Right, which is very valuable, of course. >> Exactly.

  • So you have options.

  • And if you haven’t prepared an answer to a question that comes up and youre not sure how to answer it,

  • you can still impress an employer with your response.

  • At the end of an interview, interviewers will often give you a chance to ask questions.

  • DO prepare one or two questions to ask at the interview, but DON’T make them only about logistics,

  • and DON’T make it something generic that you could on the website.

  • Asking the right kinds of questions can show your interest and engagement

  • and makes you more interesting and memorable.

  • Some of the best questions that I've heard, or one of the best questions that I've heard is: what would...

  • What do you think would allow me to be successful in this position?

  • And giving us a chance then or the interviewers a chance to talk about

  • how you could be successful in an organization.

  • Really what we're looking for and it gives us ability to talk about...

  • A little more about the culture that we're, that were in in our organization

  • and that, there's some pieces to that that make me feel like this person is really starting to engage with us,

  • and really asking some of these questions like: I think I'd like to work here, I'd be a good fit.

  • So I like....I like when they ask me why I work at the place that I'm working at.

  • I think it, it shows that they're trying to get to know me in a way that is connected to the work and the mission,

  • and it is a question I ask them, right?

  • So I think there's a good reciprocal conversation there.

  • Other than that, I want people to ask about the role and about the organization.

  • I want them to ask questions that are strategic and high-level, generally,

  • about the organization and then it's fine to ask very detailed questions about the role.

  • I do not want somebody to ask me about salary early on, um

  • at the end of the interview, I think that's totally fine.

  • Most places are gonna bring that up, but I think you want to wait until the end.

  • I think it's also fine to wait till a second interview.

  • But you shouldn't wait too long.

  • But I certainly shouldn't be a leading, and I wouldn't lead with anything else logistic, in other words,

  • you don't want to ask "What's the work-life balance here?"

  • is your first question, right?

  • >> Vacation time. >> Vacation time.

  • Benefits. All of that stuff all, of that stuff you have to ask about, and you will at some point,

  • and if you need to ask it in the first interview, that's also fine, wait till the very end of the interview.

  • Usually that is something that the organization will also broach.

  • So it’s okay to ask about logistics, but don’t do it at the beginning of the interview,

  • and don’t make it the first question you ask.

  • What about what you say without words?

  • Body language, vocal tone, eye contact?

  • So you want to be sitting up straight, you don't really want to be, if you're a woman,

  • you want to cross your ankles,

  • women and men, you wanna cross your ankles, you don't want to cross your legs.

  • Why is that?

  • Um, I think it's a more open posture.

  • And so if you're if you're crossing your leg you're kind of cutting off okay the connection with the person.

  • You don't tap your fingers, you don't want to have too much eye contact, you don't want to have too

  • little eye contact.

  • So it's not like there's a one-size-fits-all, there's no perfect body language, no perfect vocal tone.

  • But there are some best practices I guess you could say.

  • With vocal tone, I have worked with students who are very monotone.

  • And so trying to introduce some variation into your tone can

  • help you connect a lot more especially by telling a story.

  • When youre practicing your interview, practice these things too, not just your answers.

  • I do think it's important to exude confidence. I think it's important to have a good handshake.

  • I think eye contact is very very important.

  • I think it's important to look relaxed, also.

  • But I think all of those are like those are things that you should practice in your mock interview,

  • and try not to make them, though all of those things can go overboard, so it's

  • this I think it's this balance where like if you're practicing eye contact,it can sort of get awkward at some point

  • because you're staring, something like this.

  • So you want to like

  • figure out that balance and I think the best way to do this is to practice

  • with somebody who's willing to give you feedback,

  • which we should have mentioned when we talked about the mock interview.

  • Like you don't want to practice with somebody who's just gonna say: great job!

  • You want somebody who's gonna say: that answer could have been better, try it again,

  • you're not looking at me, you're looking at me too much, like, whatever those things are.

  • And then there's the general body language things like you're not sitting in an interview like this, you know?

  • I would even say like, sometimes, like crossing can be, you know, can come across as not being very open.

  • Okay, sort of like crossing your arms?

  • Sort of like crossing your arms, although it's a little bit certainly more acceptable.`

  • DO mock interviews, DON’T do them with someone who will give you no feedback.

  • Cindy’s husband told me when he was last looking for a job, that they did a mock interview together,

  • and every question in the interview, is one they had practiced.

  • And I bet you can guess what happenedhe got the job.

  • Now let’s talk about following up after an interview.

  • It’s one last way you can make a positive impression.

  • Do you expect people to follow up from their interview with you? And if so, what's the right way to do that

  • with timing and how they follow up?

  • I expect this somebody is going to write a "thank you" note.

  • If you want to really show your initiative, then do a hand-written one.

  • Handwritten one is not necessary but you should at least do it, and email to follow up, and email "thank you".

  • Follow up is I think based a little bit outside of that, right? So you've done your thank you.

  • How long should that thank you be by the way?

  • It can be super short.

  • I mean, they do not....as a matter of fact, I prefer shorter ones.

  • Sometimes people send me like a whole, you know, email of

  • more information or I want to clarify or whatever.

  • I find that slightly annoying.

  • Recently, someone sent me a follow-up that actually was helpful, I asked for an example

  • and she couldn't think of one and struggled with a little bit, and which was fine, and then she

  • sent me a follow up and said: you know I've thought of an example and I thought it would be helpful.

  • And in fact, in that case, it was helpful.

  • Because it was a key piece of information, it was a key

  • competency that I needed to understand more about in order to recommend her to advance.

  • So it was actually... that was a helpful case.

  • Cause it was a really specific thing and she knew that I was giving her more time to sort of

  • get there and she couldn't get there on the phone.

  • And that was okay.

  • So I think short is fine.

  • And something meaningful about the interview is always nice. Like,

  • I'm super excited because by X,

  • it was really interesting to learn about the organization's future trajectory, like

  • whatever the thing is, but I would keep it a little paragraph.

  • And then beyond that, is there anything that you expect or that you'd hope they don't do?

  • I hope they don't follow up incessantly.

  • Cindy went on to say that after a few weeks, if you haven’t heard anything,

  • it’s okay to follow up and check in once.

  • But that’s it.

  • Anything more than that could leave a negative impression.

  • And if the employer reaches out to you to schedule a second interview, or even offer you a job,

  • it’s important to acknowledge that, even if youve decided against the job.

  • What if youre not sure, or if youre waiting to hear from another job?

  • Don't ghost your potential employer, and what I mean by that is don't...

  • If... If you are scheduled for a second interview, show up.

  • If you are, you get past the second interview, for us, we do two interviews,

  • and an offer of employment has been sent out to you, you sign that, make sure you come to work.

  • If you're not, if you're not sure about it, tell us that, talk to us, communicate,

  • but don't allow us to get all geared up and ready for that new employee, and then not show up.

  • So let's say you've given me an offer but there's an another job, you're saying it would be appropriate to say:

  • can I have just a few more days?

  • Absolutely, absolutely.

  • And tell me that, too, for that matter.

  • Tell me that: hey, I've got another I've got another job out there that I'm waiting to hear back from,

  • might even give me the chance to maybe offer something more.

  • If I'm really interested in that person, and I really want them on board,

  • I might be talking to them a whole lot more to say: look, what can I do to get you here,

  • to get you in our organization?

  • And if someone decides ultimately they are going to go with the other job by keeping you as informed as

  • possible along the way, they've left the door open for potential future work with you.

  • Yeah. Absolutely. Yeah.

  • To me, that honesty and that integrity is huge, and when people do that, or aren't treating people with respect

  • enough to even tell them: you know, I've got another position, or I'm not sure yet, that's a huge piece for me.

  • Even if you don’t want the job, it is important to let the employer know and be honest.

  • You never know when a connection with that person or organization might be important in your career.

  • In the next three videos in this course, well see four people, a teacher, a doctor, a social worker,

  • and a marketing expert interview for a job.

  • Well take some standard interview questions and study how they answer them.

  • As we see what really works, and what doesn’t, well discuss how you can form your own compelling answers.

  • For my non-native students, were going to get your English lesson in just a minute.

  • If you haven’t already, be sure to click the subscribe button and the bell for notifications.

  • I make new videos on the English language and American culture every Tuesday

  • and to date, I have over 600 videos that focus on listening comprehension and accent reduction.

  • While youre waiting for next week’s video, a great next step would be to check out thisget started playlist.”

  • And now, for my non-native English-speaking students, I want to come back to something Laura and I discussed,

  • vocal tone.

  • I actually work with a lot of my students on something related to vocal tone as well, which is

  • you know when we have a stress worried the voice kind of goes up in pitch and down, and it's the higher pitch

  • that helps the person who's listening identify them as important words, which helps

  • understand ability increase, and so definitely a vocal tone is something that I talked about,

  • I haven't used those terms, I usually talk about pitch and stress, but just to

  • define it for someone who might not know, if someone's speaking in a monotone,

  • then that means there's not very much change in pitch, and it can be a little boring and uninteresting to listen to.

  • No matter what the person is saying.

  • Right.

  • I’m going to say that sentence fragment twice, one's with monotone and one's with more pitch variation.

  • monotone is when your speaking is on more or less the same pitch”,

  • monotone is when all your speaking is on more or less the same pitch”.

  • The first one is not very engaging at all.

  • It’s very boring to listen to.

  • And if youre a non-native speaker, it can make you even harder to understand you.

  • I work with my students a lot on varying their pitch when they speak.

  • Our pitch is higher and peaks on stressed syllables,

  • and this structure helps listeners follow and understand what's being said.

  • The contrast between stressed and unstressed syllables really does matter, just as much as accurate sounds.

  • As you practice your mock interviews, record yourself.

  • Go back and listen.

  • Can you hear changes in pitch?

  • Does it sound like youre speaking like this?

  • Or does it sound like youre speaking more like this?

  • If youre used to speaking in a monotone, or your native language has less pitch variation,

  • then it will likely feel very silly to vary your pitch more.

  • Commit yourself to it.

  • Recognize that it doesn’t sound silly to the listener and in fact makes you easier to understand.

  • Speaking with very little pitch variation will likely leave a bad impression in an interview.

  • I hope this helps you think about how to use your voice when speaking English.

  • That’s it, and thanks so much for using Rachel’s English.

Interviewers know if youve prepared for a job interview or not

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