In Steve Ford's new video series he answers questions from Business English students. Classes online with Steve are still available!!!!! info@privateenglishportal.com

Video Transcription

(Music Playing) Steve: Hello-hello-hello and welcome to PrivateEnglishPortal.com, my name is Steve and you have come to a new video series. It is called business question of the week. Probably you are familiar with peppy question of the week. But hey I am dressed a little differently. No I am the guy in a suit and tie. Okay, I am still your teacher, but now I am doing the business and of things. And I have a lot of emails requesting that I address the business English. I said what the heck, why not. So here we are and I have got an email from Jacob from Israel. His question is he would like to know the Do’s and the Don’t’s of doing a job interview in English. Well first of all thank you Jacob for your question. I am going to give you a really fast answer because as we know in the business world, time is money, right. And what I will tell you are two things regarding the Do’ and the Don’ts. The first thing is that it is quite common in a job interview that one of the starting questions to kind of break the ice and bring you closer together with the interviewer. Okay and you are the interviewee right. Is they will many times ask “Tell me a bit about yourself” okay. Now of course when they are in an interview, they would not be as smiley as your teacher is here. I can kind of put on a more serious face and maybe “Tell me a bit about yourself?” okay. And your answer to that for the Don’ts would be the following: Female: “Sure, in great at writing and at the same time at that same time I had a cousin and his father was a journalist. So because I had a crush on him, you know I kind of wanted to be become a journalist. To just you know, just to be closer to him, and mostly that was the first time I thought about becoming a journalist. And then, after that thing were happening, going and here I am”. Steve: So that is the kind of answer that you do not want to give, you do not want to give too much information. You do not want to go too much into detail. Keep it short. Keep it short and sweet okay, as they say, that way not only are you not giving too much information away about your self. Telling what maybe what you would like to do when you are a child or something like that. You want to keep it very short and straight to the point okay. So even with the information regarding your professional career, you want to keep that short and you want to keep very straight to the point. That is something I am sure as you know in the business world. Everything is fast fast fast and we wanted to keep things very straightforward. So that is something very important to focus on. And here is the Do okay. Hear one of the Do’s for that same “Tell me a bit about your self okay”. Female: “Sure, since I finished my master’s degree I started to working for the New York Times and that was a great experience. I have learned a lot with them. After that I went to South America and Africa as a special correspondent for the Washington Post and that also a very-very important experience in my career, so now I am back to the United States.” Steve: Okay so that is the kind of style you want to use, the approach you want to get your information across in a very efficient and very kind of cut and dry manner. Now the second part of Jacob’s question is. What would you consider being your weakness or you weak point? This is a question which comes up in a job interview time and time again. Once again, I am saying with a smiley face but it would definitely be set in a more probably a serious kind of setting. Here is the Don’t, one of the Don’ts for answering that question. Female: “My weakness is, I do not have any. I do not think I ever had any. Maybe once, one of my bosses, he told me that I was very-very unorganized. But this was his opinion. Because my desk was always a mess, but it was a kind of mess that I could understand, so I think that is good enough.” Steve: Okay, so you want to try and avoid giving an answer like the one you just saw. You want to give an answer, which is, let us say it is still straight forward. It is still honest, but at the same time it is, I do not want to say evasive, but let us say politically correct. So a great typical answer for what is, what would you consider to be one of your weaknesses would be the following. This is one of the Do’s. Female: “My weaknesses, well my previous employers always told me not to worry too much. Not to work too much. Because I am a little bit of a perfectionist, so I always forget to take sometime for my self and for my family. And they all complained a little bit about that, they said, I can become stressed out. So that is it. I need to learn how to relax.” Steve: Okay, so that one was a great answer. That is the kind of answer you want to give in a job interview. You want to show that you have a kind of sense of defining yourself, okay. But at the same time, you do not want to knock your self down right. You do not want to be your own worst critic. So that is a way that you can show that you are able to analyze your self, but at the same time you are always putting in higher position. A position of advantage and that is the bottom line in all of this in the job interview. You want to be in a position of advantage where you are marketing your self in the best way possible. So Jacob I hope that answers your question and I look forward to the next business question of the week nest week. Good-bye.