Welcome back to Business Skills 360 – the podcast that looks at the other side of Business English.
This is the third part in our 360 series on your first job interview, and we’re going to be looking at the topic of research. And by that I mean the research that you should be doing before you step into the interview. Okay, so let’s get started…
When you prepare for an interview, you want to arm yourself with knowledge in three key areas. Number one is the position itself. Number two is the company. And number three is the industry.
Interviewing in English for a job is a lot like a sales meeting. You need to sell yourself to the employer by convincing them that you have the knowledge, skills, and experience they need. But when you’re interviewing for your first job, it gets a little trickier as you probably don’t have that much work experience. So, you need to show the interviewer why your college experience makes you the best candidate for the job.
In this lesson, we’ll focus on ways to highlight that experience and relate it to the job during an interview in English. We’ll talk about extra-curricular activities, internships, and gap years. And, we’ll look at ways to differentiate yourself from the competition and prove that you’re the best person for the job.
In today’s dialog, we’ll rejoin Owen, who is interviewing for a test engineer position at IBH, an electronics company. He’s in the middle of a panel interview with Erica and Cindy, two HR reps, and George, who’s in charge of engineering at the printers division of IBH.
Listening Questions
1. Name one thing Owen did for his school’s robotics team.
2. Why did Owen decide to intern at Lu Tech?
3. What did Owen do during his gap year?
Welcome back to the Skills 360 – the podcast that looks at the other side of Business English.
Today’s show is the second in our series about your first job interview. Last week, in BE360 Interviews Part 1, we looked at how to show you’re right for the job when you have little or no experience. Today, we’re going to look at how to demonstrate a professional attitude during your interview.
If you’d like to test yourself on the ideas we cover in this lesson,s visit the Business Skills 360 website. There you’ll find a quiz about today’s show as well as a complete transcript.
Job interviews in English can make anyone nervous. After all, you want to make the best impression you can. But as a new graduate, you have an added challenge: little formal job experience. You need to prove to the employer that your studies and university experiences relate to the job you’re seeking.
Today, we’ll cover some ways to help you connect your college experiences to an employer’s job requirements. We’ll look at making introductions and explaining ground rules and interview format. We’ll also look at two types of common questions – “tell me about yourself?” and discussing your education.
We’ll meet Owen, who just got his master’s in electrical engineering. He’s originally from Chengdu, China, a city 2,000 kilometers west of Shanghai. But he moved to Shanghai for graduate school and has decided to stay here for work. He’s interviewing for a test engineer position at IBH, an electronics company.
Today’s meeting is a panel interview. This means a group of people will be asking the questions. So we’ll also meet Erica, who’s in charge of recruiting for IBH, and two of her colleagues: George, an engineering manager, and Cindy, a new HR manager.
Listening Questions
1. Why do you think George is handling the technical aspects of the interview?
2. What are two qualities or transferable skills that Owen mentions?
3. What does Owen say about his university’s approach to learning?
Appropriately enough, we’re doing this first series on another kind of first: your first job interview. The biggest question about first job interviews relates to experience. How do I show I’m right for the job when I have little or no work experience? What am I supposed to talk about? Even if it’s not your first job interview, you might run into the same difficulty. Perhaps you’re changing careers or transitioning into a new aspect of business. The question remains: How do I relate what I’ve done to what they want, even if it’s not directly related?
