How To “Sell” Yourself At An Interview In Foreign Companies (Part 1)

2023 Author: Amber Richards | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-05-22 00:24

The first thought of my clients when they receive an invitation for an interview: "I urgently need to improve my English!" People start frantically looking for intensive courses or preparing for interviews - often with those who have never taken one in their life. And this despite the fact that I help those who already speak English well enough to get a job or promotion in foreign companies.

I don’t urge you to follow my advice, but I can give you a recommendation: always ask the English teachers who are volunteering to help you prepare for your interview, how many interviews they themselves have gone through and how many job offers their students have received. This will help you spend your money more wisely.

11 stages of an interview is not the limit

If you are rewarded for all your efforts, and you are invited to talk in English at the company where you dream of working, instead of resuming the race through endless pages of English grammar or memorizing new words that "will definitely come in handy", try: 1. Understand the company's expectations. 2. Determine who exactly will be interviewed. 3. Dedicate time before the meeting to the practice of self-presentation in English.

I won't argue that your English level is not important, but you can hardly improve it significantly in the couple of days that you have before the interview. You should focus NOT on filling in your SPACES in the language, but on studying information about the company in the original language and preparing answers to hypothetical questions. And it is better to read about the company and prepare in English right away. Firstly, you will be able to operate with the words that the company itself uses on its website or in the job description, and you will not be looking for a translation in your head for a long time at a crucial moment.

One client of mine was determined to get a job at AirBnB and was invited for an interview by the Berlin office. There are 11 (eleven!) Stages of interviews. Another client of mine moved from Moscow to St. Petersburg, having received an offer from a Swedish company, and she also had to go through six stages of an interview, where the final was a conversation with the general director. If you are applying for a senior position, or if it is a large corporation, most likely you will have a similar procedure. All interviews will be with different people, so it makes sense to know in advance who these people are. Check out their LinkedIn profile (if you are going to work for a foreign company, you must have one too). Read interviews with these people or their publications. Study the company's website carefully and pay special attention to its values. This will help predict questions and understandwhat answers are important.

Dialogue with HR

There may be several, and the first interview with an HR representative is often a screening interview. If you pass, then you meet with the HR manager who is in charge of your referral. It is important to understand a few points here.

Format. Screening interviews usually take place by phone (although you may be invited to meet in person) and last 20-30 minutes, depending on your experience and job position.

The purpose of this interview. It is important to make sure that you understand the essence of the vacancy (many after a detailed explanation understand: "not mine"), that you do not lie in your resume (believe me, there are many such cases), that you share the values of the company, and that you are "in the budget." Yes, they can ask about money right away at the first interview so that further negotiations make sense.

Recommendations. Remember the content of your resume - this is what the questions will be based on. Prepare standard answers to standard questions in English and be sure to say them aloud. Do not just memorize, but rehearse how you will answer them aloud, and with what intonation. It is better to write down your answers on a dictaphone so that you can analyze and understand what needs to be improved. Believe me, you yourself will perfectly understand what and where you said wrong - both in terms of language errors, and in terms of how convincing your words sound. The purpose of this exercise is to add confidence. If you want to play it safe, write down the answers to the questions and then say them out loud. I understand that this is boring and difficult, but while you write, the answers are imprinted in your head, and you remember more. I recommend checking out Forbes' Ten Smart Answers To Dumb Interview Questions so you have good examples of answers to “dumb questions”. At the same time, please do not copy other people's answers word for word. They should be yours - appropriate to your personality type and your experience, the discrepancy is always obvious to the interviewer. At best, you will sound like a robot. And to speak spontaneously and naturally, you need to rehearse. I pay great attention to such rehearsals. And to speak spontaneously and naturally, you need to rehearse. I pay great attention to such rehearsals. And to speak spontaneously and naturally, you need to rehearse. I pay great attention to such rehearsals.

Interviews are different. If this is your first time meeting with a company, chances are you should prepare for an interview with an HR manager. If the company is small, chances are you will meet with your line manager right away. I have been interviewed several times via Skype by representatives of English-speaking recruiting agencies that are recruiting personnel for the company, and that's a slightly different story. These people are not representatives of the company, do not necessarily share its values. They are impartial as they interview many people and check the candidate against an invisible “list”. If you know who will be interviewing you, it is much easier to prepare, because you understand the expectations of the person sitting opposite.

An important point that many people forget

The HR specialist who conducts the first interview does not possess your competencies and cannot discuss with you the depth of the tasks ahead. Therefore, your task is not so much to talk about your achievements in the smallest detail (leave that for the next interviews), as to please the person on the contrary, no matter how trite it may sound. Train communication skills, networking, establishing contact in English. This will come in handy.

If you are applying for the role of the main developer, you should not prepare for technical questions: at this stage there will simply be no one to ask them. If you are applying for the role of a sales director, you may be asked about previous experience, but you will not be asked to calculate an imaginary budget and explain why you did it that way. Rather, you will be asked questions about you, not about the job, to determine how well you fit into the team and find common ground with management. If this is the role of a personal assistant to one of the TOP leaders, at the first interview you will also not be asked to write a draft letter with an invitation to an important conference, but may ask tricky personal questions to test for stress resistance and understand how easy it will be for a future leader to find with you mutual language.

I once observed how the initial interview for the position of personal assistant was conducted by HR and a potential leader at the same time. The first asked questions about the case, and the second joked all the time and watched how the candidates react to his humor. It was important for him that the person understood his jokes, and not stared in bewilderment with the dumb question "How can you do it during working hours!"

Especially today, and especially in foreign companies, personal qualities are valued, which you can use to better do your job. Professional skills are something that can be learned, and character is something that is already formed in you. I recommend learning to talk about one and the other in interviews, as well as supporting your words with examples.

Preparing answers to stupid questions. No offense

Many candidates get offended when HR, who cannot adequately assess their professional qualities, asks "stupid" behavioral questions like "If you were a sandwich, what would this sandwich be with?" or “What word could describe you the last three leaders?”, or “Describe a time when you faced a difficulty at work.” They take offense because they are “weeded out” based on answers that have nothing to do with the reality of the company and their professional competencies.

On the one hand, I would recommend that you think over the answers to such questions in advance, because it is difficult to change the trend: many consider it necessary to ask them. On the other hand, according to Liz Ryan, the author of Forbes, whom I respect immensely: the era of such questions fell on 2012-2016. After 2016, questions often sound like this: “Our company is now so difficult (description of the problem). Your thoughts?" Western companies, especially in the US, value specificity and willingness to make decisions. This question can be asked by both HR and your potential manager, however, in the second case, the questions will be much more detailed and deeper.

In my next column, we will focus in more detail on how to pass the qualifying round and get to the interview with the manager, as well as analyze the main mistakes of Russian-speaking candidates.

About the author:

Natalya Tokar - the creator of the training center UpSkillMe Business English for Ambitious Minds, the author of the methodology for teaching business English, upskillme.ru

Photo: Getty Images, press archives