IELTS Plus: Episode 57 - Job Interviews

Greetings everyone, and welcome to another episode of the IELTS Plus English podcast, where today we're going to answer questions all about job interviews. So yeah, I like this one. I've been looking forward to this one because I teach students here. to prepare for their job interviews. So I have quite a lot of engagement with English job interviews. I have a course. You know, I've helped several students get jobs. So really like this topic and looking forward to...

today's episode. I am going to keep things a bit shorter today because I've done some long episodes, lots of rambling, but hopefully useful. So I'm going to keep it a little shorter. There's no news, nothing to share, but I am going to give you a student challenge. So that is, tell me a little bit about yourself. This is a classic job interview question, right? Tell me a little bit about yourself. It's a great chance for you to kind of practice kind of a part two answer, but most importantly...

It's a chance for me to get to know you. The listeners, you know, I do see some regulars. I recognize your names in the comments. So tell me, tell me a little bit about yourself. Let me know in the comments, as I always say, in YouTube comments, obviously, but Spotify comments as well. I do check them. So if you comment there, I'll say hello.

Briefly, looking at today's textbook, we've got our job interviews list. Not so hard today, but, you know, really job interview specific. Evaluate, qualify. a little bit difficult one like articulate. And this vocabulary is available in the textbook. You know where it is, www.britplus.net. That's B-R-I-T. PLUS.net. You can go there and get the textbook and follow along with all these episodes. So let's get straight into it. I told you it's a bit of a quicker one today. Part one.

Question one. Have you ever had a job interview? Yes, I have. I've had several job interviews. From the age of around 18 to 21, I did have quite a lot of job changes, career changes, trying different things. And that led me to having perhaps... 5 or 10 job interviews. Next question. How do you usually prepare for a job interview? Well, I do my research on the target company. I research...

the types of questions I'm likely to receive and then how to answer them. Not every question, but the key questions. And then, of course, I make sure that I'm ready to make myself look good, smell good.

Give a good first impression, wear a nice suit. Those sort of things are important. That's part one done. We're flying. Let's go to part two. Describe a job interview you have had. Well, immediately something comes to my mind and it's a bit traumatic. So I think I'm going to talk about that and share my trauma with you.

It's been a long time since I thought about this, but I will say no more. I've put two minutes on the clock there, so my time starts now. I'd like to tell you about the job interview I did for... the British police force. When I was around 18 years old, I finished high school. I didn't go straight to university and... I didn't really know what I wanted to do with my life, but when I saw the police force and their career progression and the types of...

Well, just the career path, it looked great and it looked like something that I could do. So I decided to go for the interview and go through the hiring process. I felt like I had the right kind of credentials for this job. I certainly did. I was able to apply very easily and I was fine in the, you know. the physical exercise aspect. We were evaluated on our physical capabilities. And then I think I had a pretty standard interview. Everything was okay, but then we came to this behavioral.

interview where they talked about sort of my experiences with certain situations in the past and then they tested my ability to deal with certain situations. So let me tell you a little more about that. The traumatic thing that happened was that they put me through various scenarios where I had to deal with it as a policeman. So, for example, you've got this guy.

panicking and complaining at me and I had to deal with it and calm him down and tell him what to do. But he was in his 40s and I was 18 years old. And I was absolutely terrified of this situation and it was incredibly embarrassing. Okay, time's up. So I...

I did try not to get too deeply into that story because I wanted to make sure that my answer was relevant and I was using some of this vocabulary. But for you listeners who are... curious um i will finish the story it's very brief but basically as i said we went through this section of the interview he's this kind of 45 50 year old man

panicking in front of me and i just didn't i didn't know what to do and i froze and i i remember because he's an actor uh he kept kind of pushing me to do something still acting. And I just was saying really simple things like, oh, don't worry. Everything's okay. I was so shy and meek, you know, as this little 18 year old boy. And eventually he gave up and he lowered his head and said no more. And lowering his head meant this acting is over. And it was...

nightmare. My result was awful and I failed. So that's my traumatic experience. I haven't thought about it for years and years, but it was really awful and really knocked my confidence for a while.

Okay, we'll move on to some part threes. And first question is, how can a candidate make a good impression during a job interview? Well... To make a good impression, you definitely have to be professional. You have to look professional. So I think the first thing is you must dress well. You must wear a suit, make sure that your hair's looking good and you're washed and all these basic things. So that's so important to make a good first impression.

The other thing that's important for me is being able to enter the room, smile and shake the interviewer's hand if possible. Because I think that's also really important to show them, I'm a nice guy. And I think that gives a really good first impression. Good. I worry a little that I'm not using today's language enough. So let's really focus on that in these last two questions. What are the main differences between job interviews in your country, in your country?

And those in other countries. Well, obviously, the types of candidate are going to be different. And the way they... uh evaluate the candidates is going to be different i know that in south korea the way they evaluate people is is so different to the uk

there's a big emphasis in the career on your credentials, your really certified credentials and your educational background. Whereas in England, I feel it's a bit more focused on... job experience and your behavioral interview the behavioral interview really shows how you reacted in certain situations in the past and gives an insight in how you can deal with situations in the future. So that carries a lot of weight in the UK.

Good, okay. And finally, how has technology changed the way companies conduct job interviews? I think it's had a huge influence. I haven't experienced this myself, but... We're now having AI interviews. So the company uses AI to ask their questions to the candidate online. And then I suppose they assess the answers.

Maybe the recordings, maybe a human assesses the recordings, maybe an AI does. There's lots of ways that AI can be implemented in a job interview. Of course, that connects to the other big changes. When I was interviewed, you didn't do online interviews. It was all done offline. But nowadays, it seems a huge number of companies... start with an online interview and then perhaps progress to meeting offline. So yeah, technology has made a big difference. Good.

I'm really happy with today's answers. I think in the end, I was able to cover most vocabulary. They're not so easy to get in today, but yeah, enjoyed that one. So that's the end. of today's episode a little bit shorter and next week wow what an important one for me as a teacher there's going to be pressure on me to do well it's language learning so study super duper hard this week and i'll be back next week to talk about language learning so have a good time study and i'll see you then bye