Shadowing Practice: Answering behavioral interview questions is shockingly uncomplicated - Learn English Speaking with Video
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Today I'm going to explain to you how to answer literally any behavioral interview question.
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Now it doesn't matter what job you're working in.
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If you're someone who is highly technical, like a software engineer, or if you're someone who works on the business side, knowing how to answer behavioral interview questions is still equally as important.
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Because although in the interview process for someone who's more technical, there's more weight probably being placed on the technical portion of the interview,
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you are still often going to run into behavioral interview questions, which are more qualitative in nature and are going to ask you about different experiences
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and times in your life or career when you've demonstrated certain qualities that the interviewer is looking for.
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Hi, if you're new to the channel, my name is Matt.
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I'm currently working in strategy and ops at Google.
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Before that, I was a management consultant at BCG, and I make these videos because I enjoy it.
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But let's get back to it.
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So the first thing that I think we need to talk about is what is a behavioral interview question?
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And I know most people at this point are probably looking at me and thinking, dude, of course I know what a behavioral interview question is.
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Do you think I'm stupid?
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That's just a question when someone asks me, oh yeah, tell me about a time when you demonstrated leadership or tell me about a time that you failed, right?
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And then I just give them an answer, draw off my experience and demonstrate that I am a winner and that I am someone that they should hire, right?
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Now, while at a surface level that is what a behavioral interview question is, it's actually a little bit deeper than that, and we're going to get into that today.
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So a behavioral interview question is simply a question where the interviewer is trying to get you to demonstrate a certain quality.
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Now, this question can be framed in a million different ways, but at the end of the day,
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there are going to be a certain set of qualities that employers are always looking for.
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Now, what I have behind me are what I would argue 99 % of employers would like to see in some way, shape, or form from potential candidates.
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And this is based on my own personal experience having interviewed at roles in finance, consulting, and tech.
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So take it with a grain of salt.
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If you're interviewing for a different industry, things could be slightly different.
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But generally speaking, if you are interviewing four roles where you are going to have to work with other people,
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then these qualities are going to be tested.
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The first quality is leadership.
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Now, why is leadership so important?
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Well, leadership is a really common quality that most companies want from their employees because at the end of the day,
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you eventually want that person that you hired when they were 22 to hopefully get promoted and move up through the ranks.
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And how does that happen?
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Well, part of it is they have to demonstrate leadership.
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Now, the word leadership is maybe a little bit overrated.
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I think that at the end of the day, this is similar to what I'll just call taking the initiative.
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AKA, are you someone who is a self -starter?
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Do you take the initiative?
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Are you proactive when you're given a task?
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Or are you someone that's just passive and has to wait for your manager to tell you what to do?
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And so this is a quality that doesn't matter what job or what company you're at.
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An employer will almost always want to hire someone with more initiative versus someone with not, all else being equal.
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And so this is a very very commonly tested quality
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that you need to be able to demonstrate in behavioral interviews or at least need to be prepared if
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called upon to deliver a story that demonstrates that you have shown initiative in the past or that you are a leader.
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An example of this question that commonly could come up is, yes, Tell me about a time when you demonstrated leadership.
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Now that's the most straightforward version of this question.
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But, as I said earlier, there can be many different ways of asking this question.
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For example, I just brought up the word initiative.
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So this question could have also been phrased as, Tell me about a time when you demonstrated initiative.
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Or, even better than that, tell me about a time when you took the lead even though you were not in a formal position of leadership.
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Now, all three of these questions are actually just asking the same exact thing.
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They're all just trying to ask you to demonstrate this quality right here.
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But they're asked in slightly different ways.
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And sometimes the more nuanced ways of asking it, such as the last one that I just mentioned of,
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tell me about a time when you demonstrated taking the initiative even though you weren't formally in a position of authority.
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Now that trips some people up because they're not expecting it.
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And then suddenly they're thinking, oh shoot, I don't know if I ever had a situation like
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that in my life where I wasn't in a formal position of authority, AKA I didn't have the title of being someone in leadership, but I still took the initiative.
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Right?
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And so that's something to keep in mind as well as we go through these qualities.
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Now the next quality is resilience.
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And resilience is an interesting one because you would think that right off the bat, oh, they want me to show a positive quality, right?
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And your mind goes to thinking about things that you've achieved.
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But actually this question is simply trying to understand how you react to challenges and how you react to failure.
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And so there's a bunch of different ways that this question can be asked.
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Or rather a bunch of different questions that can be posed to try and get you to demonstrate resilience.
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The most common of which is, tell me about a time that you failed.
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But also, something that not everyone notices is that, so this question, while it can be posed as, tell me about a time that you failed or tell me about a time that you overcame a challenge,
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You could also be asked, tell me about your proudest accomplishment.
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Now that is a little bit different because it's not as obvious now that they're actually trying to understand your resilience.
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Because when somebody asks you, tell me about your proudest accomplishment or your biggest achievement up to date, most people, they immediately just want to start bragging about something that they're proud of.
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And it's totally fine to be proud of your accomplishments
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but they're actually more interested in what it took for you to go from point A to point B
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and to actually get to that accomplishment, which oftentimes is going to involve overcoming some sort of monumental challenge or hurdle, aka demonstrating resilience.
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They're not as interested in the actual accomplishment itself.
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And I think that's something really, really important to consider.
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So this question can actually be also asked as, tell me about your proudest accomplishment and what it took to get there.
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But moving on, so the third quality is teamwork.
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And like I said, if you're interviewing for a role that involves you having to work with other people, which is 99 % of jobs today,
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then you're going to probably run into this question at one point or another, which is, tell me about a time when you had to work in a team.
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Now, that's like the easy one, though, right?
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As you're sort of probably picking up, there's like first level questions, which are super obvious.
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And then there's sort of like second level.
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And then there's like third order questions that are much more nuanced.
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And so again, the first order question here for teamwork would be something like, tell me about a time that you worked in a team.
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Tell me about a time that you collaborated with others.
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Like it's so obvious what they're asking, right?
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But if they get a little bit deeper and they ask a more nuanced version of that, like a second or third order question, that could be something like,
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tell me about a time when you had to bring together a group of people
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that you didn't know or tell me about a time
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when you had to bring together a group of people with disparate backgrounds to achieve a common goal.
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Now that is a more nuanced question.
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And I know some of you might be thinking right now, wait, Matt, isn't that also like, isn't that a leadership question?
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Because if you're bringing together a group of people, isn't that demonstrating leadership?
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And yes, if you caught on to that, you're one step ahead
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because what you'll realize soon is that a lot of stories actually can cover multiple qualities, but we'll get to that in a bit.
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And so anyways, just be aware that teamwork is another quality that is commonly tested.
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Now the fourth one, which is similar to teamwork, is how do you deal with other people?
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How do you influence or persuade people to your side, to your opinion?
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How do you voice your thoughts?
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And so a common way that this is asked is, tell me about a time when you had to influence someone or persuade someone or a group of people of
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a certain objective or goal?
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What did you do?
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What did it take?
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Now that's the basic level question but a more nuanced version of this
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which is a little bit more difficult
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and might trip some people up can be
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if they add a little bit more detail
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and they say tell me about a time
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when you had to convince someone who was more senior than you of your opinion
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or tell me about a time
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when you had to convince someone more senior than you of an opinion that they disagreed with you on.
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Now that makes it even more difficult because now you start thinking of, okay, how do I demonstrate that I'm able to influence not just my peers
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but also people who are more senior than me with more authority.
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And finally rounding it out, the fifth bucket that you'll commonly run into when interviewing at companies is an ethical or moral conflict.
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And so So these are going to be questions where they're asking you about a situation
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when you saw something or you heard something that didn't really make you feel right.
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Maybe it was ethically or morally ambiguous.
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And you had the choice of either like bringing it to the light and raising it to management.
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Or you could have just shoved it under the rug and forgotten about it.
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And this is really trying to test your integrity.
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And so a common way that this question is posed is, tell me about a time when you ran into a moral or ethical conflict at work, and what did you do?
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Or tell me about a time when you saw a co -worker doing something that was unethical, what did you do about it?
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Now these ones are tricky, because a lot of the times, you don't want to come across as someone who is necessarily a tattletale,
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but you also don't want to come across as being someone
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that just turns the other way and turns a blind eye to unethical behavior.
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Right?
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And so it's a nuanced approach to how you have to answer these questions.
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But now that we've talked through these five major qualities, one thing I want to note is that some of you are probably saying, wait, but Matt, isn't there a chance
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that someone asks me a question that's actually not related to any of these five buckets?
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And yes, it is possible, although the probability is quite low because,
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again, as I've mentioned, a lot of questions framed in different ways are actually just asking about the same qualities.
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So for example, being asked about success is actually also asking about challenges and failure and resilience.
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Asking about teamwork can also be asking about how you influence
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and persuade others and whether or not you're a leader slash you take the initiative.
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And so now that we understand this, the first step you need to do, and the first thing I always recommend to students or anyone who's interviewing,
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is in order to prepare, you need to first start with a brain dump. And what is that?
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That's just when you take out a Google Doc
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or you take out a piece of paper
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and you start writing down everything that comes to mind when it comes to your experiences, both in your personal and your professional life.
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Just write down every single possible experience you've had
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and keep in mind these qualities as you think through what sort of experiences you've had in your life
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that potentially demonstrate each of these.
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Now, I know some of you are probably like, dude, I don't actually feel like I have qualities that these people are testing for.
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Like, I don't feel like I'm a leader.
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Like, I don't know if I've ever led a club on campus, or I don't know if I've ever been like the speech and debate champion,
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or I don't know if I've ever had to do anything at work where I was a quote -unquote leader. But here's the thing.
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It doesn't have to be an official position or title of authority.
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It It doesn't have to be something where you were like the president of a club.
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Think smaller and think more detail.
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There are tons of situations throughout our daily lives and throughout our professional and personal lives that demonstrate leadership,
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that demonstrate resilience, that demonstrate teamwork, persuasion, blah blah blah.
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It can be literally as, it can literally be as small as, oh I was helping out with this event
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and then I saw this thing happen and then you know somebody tripped
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and spilled their drinks everywhere and I went over there
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and I immediately called for help and rallied the troops
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and got everyone else to come over and help this person out and we cleaned it up in 10 minutes.
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It can be something literally as small as that and so don't limit yourself.
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Again, this is a brain dump.
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We can cut out irrelevant stories later
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but the goal of this step is to simply get as many experiences as possible
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that later we can then draw on and actually craft our stories
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which leads me to the second step which is time to craft your arsenal.
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Now I've said arsenal
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because every time you go into an interview it's kind of like you're going to battle
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and the person who's the most prepared who has the biggest arsenal sure
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that might not necessarily ensure that you'll win
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but it certainly doesn't hurt to have as many weapons as possible in your arsenal when going into a battlefield.
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And so I'm going to gloss over this second section because I think this is very commonly known framework, the STAR framework for forming your behavioral interview responses,
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but let's walk through it quickly one by one.
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So just to run through the STAR framework really quickly, you start with the situation which is laying the groundwork and spending like 10 seconds talking about the context,
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and then you move into the task which is what basically you were asked to do by someone.
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Finally, the action which is what you actually did in response to receiving that task,
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and then the result, which is closing it off and explaining what the actual outcome of your actions was.
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And by the end of this, once you get to the result, it should be clear to the person listening that you clearly have the quality of whether it's leadership,
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resilience, teamwork, influencing, whatever, integrity.
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It should be very clear to them what you've demonstrated.
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There should be no question in their mind.
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And even though it's split out into four steps, the goal here is to create a cohesive narrative.
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So it shouldn't sound super like blocky
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or it shouldn't be like super awkward moving from situation to task or task to action or action to result.
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It should sound just like a story and it should flow seamlessly.
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And so to give an example, let's say that I got asked a question about, tell me about a time when you had to influence someone more senior than you at work of a certain decision.
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So the situation would be something like, okay, so back when I was an investment banking analyst, there was a product that the team used called PitchBook,
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which is a subscription -based website where you can access all sorts of data related to early stage startup companies, including how much funding they've raised,
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how old they are, who the founders are, any news related to the company, and any other internal metrics that are publicly available.
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And this product was super important to the investment banking analysts in my class.
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But one day I was in a meeting with our head of M &A and he was mentioning to me that, you know, this pitch book subscription, it's so expensive.
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I'm really thinking about canceling our subscription because honestly, it seems like you can get all this information on Google.
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Stop.
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So that's the situation.
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And then to continue it though, now we have to go into the task or basically the impetus to the actions that I later did.
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So in this case, it could be something like, And so I was in this meeting listening to the managing director and I told him, you know, honestly I actually find this pitch book product to be pretty useful
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because it saves us a lot of time And he said to me, you know, if you can show me some data to back that up, then I'll honestly renew our subscription
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And so I decided that I was gonna go back
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and survey my analyst class And so that is the task
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that I was given by the managing director to basically find some data
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or come back to him with a more compelling argument as to why we should keep the PitchBook subscription
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and the action that I'm gonna take is I'm gonna go
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and survey my analyst class and so continuing the story and
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so I went out and I surveyed the entire analyst class at the bank
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and basically asked them a few simple questions about do you find PitchBook to be valuable,
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would your workflows be significantly inhibited or slash would your productivity be significantly reduced
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if you didn't have it and why and after I ran
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that simple survey and aggregated all the results I went back to the managing director
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and I showed him the results and I said, hey look, the data shows that all the analysts
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or the majority of the analysts at the bank actually find PitchBook to be highly, highly valuable because it's helping us to save a ton of time
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when we're building pitch decks and when we're building meeting materials for investors.
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It's helping us because it's aggregating all of the data into one place.
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And once he saw that data, he was convinced and decided to renew the subscription.
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And so what I learned from that experience is that even
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if you're working with someone more senior than you sometimes it helps to come prepared with some data
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or to go out and to do a little bit of digging on your own
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so that you can prepare a more compelling argument backed by information that says this is the right decision.
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So that's an example of how you might want to talk through a specific story using the STAR framework of situation, task, action, and result.
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Now notice also that at the end I said this one phrase, which is, and what I learned from that experience is X.
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This is something that's kind of small but is also pretty important and if you can implement into your behavioral interview responses,
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you will just be that much sharper in the interview.
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Because what you're doing when you say, and what I learned from that experience ultimately was X,
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Y, and Z, is you're actually tying all of these things together you're synthesizing basically everything that you've just talked about.
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This whole story with all these details that you've told them.
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You're basically tying it all up together in a little bow at the end
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and hammering home the point that this is how I demonstrated this quality.
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Or this is where I learned that challenges, setbacks are normal, but I can overcome any failure.
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Or this is where I learned that in order to successfully work in a team, you have to understand everybody's viewpoint.
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The lights are turning off because I've been talking for so long. Where was I?
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So, yes, always try to tie everything up at the end
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and say something about this is what you learned from the experience
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and ultimately this is what happened and this is what you took away from it.
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Because if there's no takeaway, then it's less clear to the interviewer after you finish talking what you actually learned from the experience.
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Now the next thing I wanted to talk about here is you want to always focus on showing, not telling.
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Now what do I mean by that?
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Showing versus telling, you may have heard your teacher talk about this in English class.
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It's when you basically don't just tell someone that you have leadership or that you're a team player, but you actually show them through the story and through the details.
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And so to give a concrete example, let's say we're talking about a story where you demonstrated that overcoming failure, or in this case, getting bad feedback from your boss.
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Maybe you messed up on something and your boss told you that you messed up.
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So if you were going to just tell someone what happened or how you felt, you would just say, my boss told me that I messed up and I felt upset.
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Right?
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Nothing you're saying is factually incorrect, but it simply doesn't hit the point as well as if you say something like, my boss told me that I messed up and the first thought that came to my mind was,
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boy am I screwed.
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Right?
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Two different ways of saying the same exact thing
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but the second way really demonstrates like wow you were feeling under pressure
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and you at that moment felt like you were actually screwed.
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What are you gonna do now?
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Right?
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And then that's where you start going into
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and this is what I did to bounce back blah blah blah this is how I overcome that failure.
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And so again the nuance here is that the second option
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when you're showing not telling you're storytelling again you're storytelling
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and this comes back to tangent here but majority of interviewing
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and conveying your experiences to other people is knowing how to craft the right story and knowing how to tell your experiences.
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in a way that's captivating to the audience and doesn't cause them to tune out.
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You have to give them a reason to want to pay attention because again, put yourself in your interviewer's shoes.
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They're literally interviewing probably 10, 20 people a week.
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Why on earth should they listen to the 10th person talk about a time that they failed?
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Why on earth should they listen to you talk about
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that on -campus business club that you're a part of
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when five other people also talked about the on -campus business club that they were also a part of the day before.
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You make it interesting by telling stories.
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Stories are what captivate people.
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And how do you tell good stories?
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Well, you show, you don't just tell.
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But now, let's move to the final step.
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So once you've crafted your arsenal, and now let's say you have at least two stories, aim for at least two stories that demonstrate each of these qualities.
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Now the reason why you want to have at least two and not just one is because say for example,
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you have one story that demonstrates leadership and also influencing and persuasion and then you get asked,
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tell me about a time that you demonstrated leadership and then you give that story, but then right after they also ask you
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tell me about another time that you demonstrated influencing slash persuasion
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and now you've used up your story that covers this quality and you're like, oh shoot now I have to make up something on the fly
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and you never never never want to run into that situation
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and so best case scenario have more than one story
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that backs up each of these qualities because you never know what might happen
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and you don't want to be caught short -handed
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but moving to step three practicing the delivery now this is a step where i think most people think
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that all they have to do is just practice a few times maybe with a friend
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and then they'll be fine
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but the reality is i think most people underweight the importance of this third step
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and they overweight the importance of this first and second step
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which is brainstorming stage because I've talked to a lot of students
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and I've done some coaching as well
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and almost everyone always has like a giant word doc with all their behavioral questions
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and then it's like 10 15 pages long
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and they've written out like huge paragraphs of different times
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when they've demonstrated leadership or teamwork or resilience but then I go in
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and I actually ask them like okay let's do like a mock question and let me ask you, okay, tell me about a time when you demonstrated this quality
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and then I pretend to be their interviewer and do some role -playing and then the delivery is just not good.
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And the reason is because they didn't practice properly.
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And they've done all this thinking and they put it all on paper, but all of this work is nothing if you can't deliver it because an interview is in person,
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it's live, it's when you speak to someone.
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It's not like you submitting an essay to your professor.
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So how do we get good with the delivery?
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Well, the number one question that I get and the number one problem
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that I see a lot of people run into is how do I avoid sounding scripted?
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How do I avoid sounding like I'm just reading off of a paper?
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The solution is really simple.
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Nine times out of ten, the reason why you're sounding scripted is because you prepared by writing word for word what you thought you should say.
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And you have maybe a whole paragraph and you're trying to memorize it
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or you're trying to remember what you wrote word for word.
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And so what that's doing is it's making you focus more on memorization than on fluidity and forming cohesive coherent sentences.
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And so when you practice you should never never practice using completely scripted out written paragraphs.
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It's okay if during your brain dump phase you want to do that, but when you're practicing verbally, always use bullets.
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Short bullets.
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And then force yourself to practice by only looking at those like four or five bullets per story.
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And what this is gonna do is yes, it's gonna be tough.
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It might be awkward because you're gonna forget what you wanted to say.
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But it's gonna force you and it's gonna force your brain to actually work.
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You're not just memorizing.
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It's going to force you to form cohesive sentences, coherent sentences that flow because your brain's going to be like, oh shoot, okay, I know bullet one is like,
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uh, I got a bad grade at school and bullet two is like, I talked to the professor at office hours to see if there was anything that could be done,
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but then how do I connect the dots between bullet one and bullet two?
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And then it's going to force you to think about what to say.
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And then you're going to say something that's more natural because you're not going to be just memorizing.
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And so bullet points is number one.
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Second thing is you have You have to have to record yourself.
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I say this in a lot of videos, but I'm going to say it again.
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The number one thing
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that you can do to get the most immediate feedback on your communication skills and your delivery is to record yourself.
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Because the harshest critic of ourselves is us.
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And so if you can look at yourself on a screen
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and you're forced to not only see what you look like when you're talking, but also hear how you sound,
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nine times out of ten you're gonna cringe if you're not someone who does this on a daily basis like I do.
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Say you don't, you're not a YouTuber or you're not someone who has to be on camera all the time.
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You're gonna be like, what the heck?
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I sound like that?
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I sound like that?
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Ugh.
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Ugh.
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But it's good because what it's gonna do is you're actually gonna notice really acutely all the times that you say, um, or like, or all the times that you,
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like, broke eye contact or you looked down from the camera, and you're gonna be like, wow, I actually, I look so not confident when I look down at the camera.
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Maybe next time instead if I want to break eye contact with the interviewer, I should just look to the side.
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Right?
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Or maybe next time, when I don't know what to say, instead of saying like or sorta or you know,
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I should just pause and take a second to think because it makes me come across as actually more thoughtful.
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Right?
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Okay, so the third thing I already mentioned here, but this kind of ties into the recording yourself thing.
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Just remember to watch yourself and remove any filler words.
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Remember that pauses always feel longer to you than to the person on the other side of the table
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and an easy way to honestly just come across as someone who's a little bit more thoughtful is to take pauses.
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Instead of using filler words, take your time and let yourself think and be comfortable with the silence.
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Now if you can do all of these things and deliver your stories in a way such that you demonstrate the situation,
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task, action, and result in a cohesive way and you have stories, multiple stories that demonstrate each of these major commonly tested qualities,
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then I guarantee you the next time you go into an interview and you get asked a behavioral interview question, you're going to deliver it with confidence, you're going to deliver it with conviction,
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and ultimately you're going to leave the interview thinking to themselves, dang, I want to hire that guy or that girl.
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I want them on my team.
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Now the last thing I'll do is I now just want
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to go through some examples for each of these five qualities
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and I'll give you an example
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that I've used personally in the past for behavioral interviews now that we've talked through the entire process of how to prepare.
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And so with the leadership and initiative question
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and the influencing persuasion question I sort of already walked through
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an example where I convinced the head of M &A at the investment bank
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that I worked at that we should renew our pitch book subscription.
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But now let's talk about a story relating to resilience.
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So I used to play the violin in high school and when I was a senior in college I really,
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really, really wanted to join this one orchestra that was the highest level at the music school
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and went on international pour every year.
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And it was my last chance to get into this orchestra
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because I was a rising senior and so I practiced super hard on the violin, went into my auditions, the day of the auditions,
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gave it my all and unfortunately wasn't selected.
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And so I was really upset for about a week and I thought that was that.
360
But a week later I got a call from the director of the orchestra program telling me that, hey Matt, although the violin auditions were extremely competitive this year,
361
we actually have a need for more violists, which is a different instrument.
362
And so if you're willing to actually study the viola over the summer for the next couple months,
363
will give you another chance to re -audition in the fall for a chance to join the viola section.
364
So what did I do?
365
Well, I absolutely jumped on the opportunity.
366
And I, for the next few months, hired a viola teacher, spent all my days basically practicing, trying to learn how to read the music because it's like reading a different language.
367
It's in a different clef if you're musical.
368
And I just remember practicing so much.
369
My family was driving to vacation in Maine and my parents thought I was crazy.
370
I was literally practicing in the Airbnb.
371
But by the end of the summer, I re -auditioned and was fortunate to get accepted into the orchestra
372
and ended up going on tour in Norway through five different cities.
373
And it was one of the most incredible experiences of my life.
374
And ultimately what I learned from that experience is sometimes opportunities come up serendipitously.
375
And so it helps to have an open mind
376
when it comes to failure and just being prepared for new opportunities that you may not have expected initially.
377
And so that's an example of resilience, overcoming challenge, and failure.
378
And I think the last quality that I'll cover is demonstrating ethical slash moral conflict and how you responded to that.
379
So basically demonstrating integrity.
380
And so an example here could be, yeah, so the summer of my freshman year,
381
I actually worked at a UPS package facility where we basically processed packages
382
and loaded them into the backs of tractor -trailer trucks.
383
It was a super grueling job, manual labor, every day would show up to work, my back would be hurting, and basically for eight hours straight with a few breaks,
384
we would be throwing bags into the back of trucks.
385
Now this was an hourly wage job and
386
so we had to punch in and punch out and About halfway through the summer.
387
I noticed that one of my colleagues one of my co -workers was actually
388
punching in and punching out a little bit early during the day and then
389
delaying his punch -out time so that he basically would get an extra hour of pay, an hour or two hours of pay, every single day.
390
Now, it didn't seem like a big deal to me at the time because, you know, what's an extra hour, really?
391
It's just a minimum wage job, and so it didn't feel like something that required escalating to a manager or making a big deal about it.
392
Plus, I didn't want to get on his bad side.
393
But as I thought about it a little bit more
394
and as I brought it up with my older brother and had a conversation with him, He mentioned something to me that really struck me, which was that it's really the little things that define who we are.
395
It's how we react when people aren't watching, and it's the little things that seem insignificant that actually reflect the most about our character.
396
And when I thought about that, I realized that this wasn't really something that I felt comfortable letting slip by.
397
And so I brought it up with the manager, and I told him that, look, I don't want this person to get in any trouble, but I just want to raise this to you that I've been noticing that this has been happening.
398
And what ended up happening was the manager obviously had to speak with that person, and they didn't end up losing their job thankfully,
399
but the company later then realized they needed to implement a better timekeeping system that was less manual.
400
And again, what I took away from that experience is
401
that the little things are the most important when it comes to your character because it's the small things, not the big things, that make a huge splash or noise.
402
It's the little things that people don't see that actually define who you are as a person.
403
I hope you guys find this video helpful.
404
That's all I got for you.
405
I'll see you in the next one.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Answering behavioral interview questions is shockingly uncomplicated”. This video has 405 sentences and 6244 words to shadow. The speech runs for 31:42. The speaker talks fast, about 197 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 86% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English; the rest is worth studying before you start.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 15 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| demonstrate verb | /ˈdɛm.ənˌstɹeɪt/ | To show how to use (something). |
| behavioral adjective | /bɪˈheɪvjəɹəl/ | Of or relating to behavior. |
| resilience noun | /ɹɪˈzɪl.ɪ.əns/ | The mental ability to recover quickly from depression, illness or misfortune. |
| teamwork noun | The cooperative effort of a team of people to achieve a common goal. | |
| analyst noun | /ˈænəlɪst/ | Someone who analyzes. |
| subscription noun | /səbˈskɹɪpʃən/ | Access to a resource for a period of time, generally for payment. |
| nuance noun | /ˈnjuː.ɑːns/ | A minor distinction. |
| accomplishment noun | /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ.mənt/ | The act of accomplishing; completion; fulfilment. |
| interviewer noun | /ˈɪntɚvjuɚ/ | One who interviews. |
| cohesive adjective | /kəʊˈhiː.sɪv/ | Having cohesion. |
| persuasion noun | /pɚˈsweɪʒən/ | The act of persuading, or trying to do so; the addressing of arguments to someone with the intention of changing their mind or convincing them of a certain… |
| audition noun | /ɑˈdɪʃən/ | A performance, by an aspiring performer, to demonstrate suitability or talent. |
| orchestra noun | /ˈɔː.kɪs.tɹə/ | A large group of musicians who play together on various instruments, usually including some from strings, woodwind, brass and/or percussion; the instruments… |
| viola noun | /vaɪˈoʊlə/ | A stringed instrument of the violin family, somewhat larger than a violin, played under the chin, and having a deeper tone. |
| renew verb | /ɹɪˈnjuː/ | To make (something) new again; to restore to freshness or original condition. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| come across verb | To change sides; to cross over to work for the opposition. |
| bring together verb | To cause people to do something together; to bring about togetherness. |
| end up verb | To bring to a conclusion. |
| mess up verb | To make a mess of; to untidy, disorder, soil, or muss. |
| talk through verb | To tell (someone) step by step how to do something. |
| come up verb | To emerge or become known, especially unexpectedly. |
| go through verb | To travel from one end of something to the other. |
| take away from verb | To subtract a quality from; make something seem not so good or interesting. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- Do you think I'm stupid?
- AKA, are you someone who is a self -starter?
- Do you take the initiative?
- Are you proactive when you're given a task?
- You're gonna be like, what the heck?
Grammar in this video
The structures the speaker uses most, with the exact words from the video:
| Structure | In the video |
|---|---|
| Present perfect continuous have/has been + -ing — an action that started earlier and is still going on | I've been talking · I've been noticing |
| Present perfect have/has + past participle — a past action that still matters now | you've demonstrated · have shown · you've achieved |
| Passive voice be + past participle — the focus is on what happens, not who does it | being placed · can be framed · is based |
| Relative clauses who / which + clause — extra information about a person or thing | someone who is · questions, which are · people, which is |
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 169 contractions and reduced forms, such as you're, don't, gonna. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- The “th” sounds: ethical /ˈɛθɪkəl/, unethical /ʌnˈɛθɪkəl/, thoughtful /ˈθɔːtfəl/
- The “sh” and “zh” sounds: subscription /səbˈskɹɪpʃən/, accomplishment /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ.mənt/, persuasion /pɚˈsweɪʒən/, audition /ɑˈdɪʃən/, splash /splæʃ/
- Long words — get the stress right: behavioral /bɪˈheɪvjəɹəl/, resilience /ɹɪˈzɪl.ɪ.əns/, accomplishment /əˈkɑm.plɪʃ.mənt/, unethical /ʌnˈɛθɪkəl/, irrelevant /ɪˈɹɛləvənt/
How to practise with this video
- Listen to the whole video once without speaking and note the words you do not know.
- Start at 0.75× speed, shadow it sentence by sentence, then go back to normal speed once it feels easy.
- Record yourself and compare with the original, paying attention to words like demonstrate, behavioral, resilience.
What is the Shadowing Technique?
Shadowing is a science-backed language learning technique originally developed for professional interpreter training and popularized by polyglot Dr. Alexander Arguelles. The method is simple but powerful: you listen to native English audio and immediately repeat it out loud — like a shadow following the speaker with just a 1–2 second delay. Unlike passive listening or grammar drills, shadowing forces your brain and mouth muscles to simultaneously process and reproduce real speech patterns. Research shows it significantly improves pronunciation accuracy, intonation, rhythm, connected speech, listening comprehension, and speaking fluency — making it one of the most effective methods for IELTS Speaking preparation and real-world English communication.