Business English Tip of the Week

In today's high-paced and competitive business environment, good jobs are hard to find. Sharpening your job hunting and, particularly, interviewing skills is a great way to keep yourself in the competition. One of the most important things to keep in mind when being interviewed is that you should try to relax. If you feel nervous and uncomfortable, your interviewer will also feel uncomfortable. So it's important to smile and try to be as natural and friendly as you can.

The good news is that while part of the interview is to test your actual answers, much of it is done to simply get a sense of you as a person. That means that while it is important to answer in a certain way, it's perhaps more important to be friendly, confident and natural.

Here are some tips:

• Smile as much as you can. Smiling breaks down barriers and will make you and your interviewer feel more relaxed.
• Be confident - this doesn't mean brag or show off, but an interview is not the time to be humble or downplay your experience or accomplishments. If there is only one time in your life when it's good to tell someone how great you are, the interview is that time!
• Don't lie but don't sell yourself short: don't talk about what experience you don't have! Always turn these kinds of questions into positives. For example, if an interviewer asks if you have any experience in bookkeeping, you never want to simply say "No."  Instead, think about any connection that might relate: "Well, I don't have any direct bookkeeping experience, but I often helped the bookkeeper so I'm familiar with the terms and I feel I could learn it quite quickly." Or: "I never did any bookkeeping myself but I took two accounting courses in college and feel that I understand the basics of it."
• Dress the part: there is an old saying that people should dress like the position they want to get. That means a professional appearance is very important. Much of this will depend, of course, on what country you are in, but don't ever worry about being too smart for an interview!
• Be as detailed as possible: often interviewers will ask you "hypothetical" problem questions (for example, "What would you do if your boss asked you to do something that you didn't know how to do?"); it's important in questions like these to be as detailed as possible.