Shadowing Practice: Anthropic Culture Fit | Behavioral Interview - Learn English Speaking with Video
Creating lesson...
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Anthropic has one of the hardest hiring bars in tech to get past.
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And the most likely reason you will get rejected from Anthropic is their CultureFit round.
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That is a fact from an internal source at their company.
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The CultureFit round is most likely to be failed because of the following three reasons.
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Reason number one, you don't bring up any projects that are sketchy legally or ethically from your past.
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You heard that right.
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You don't bring up sketchy things.
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That's the problem.
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Number two, you are not showing enough emotional discomfort about that sketchiness.
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Reason number three, you are not skeptical enough about Anthropik's mission.
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You heard that right as well.
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All of this is counterintuitive and that's where the problem lies.
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Let's get into the counterintuitive ways to approach this interview and actually pass it.
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Let's start with the easier problem.
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Okay.
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So not about your past projects.
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Let's start with Anthropik's mission.
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What do candidates normally do in an interview round about the mission?
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I love the mission.
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I'm a big fan.
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It's my dream company.
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That kind of thinking here is going to make you fail.
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Anthropik will say something to the tune of wanting some push back on their mission.
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And they're not going to word the question like that.
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They're going to be like, this is what we're trying to do.
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Give us some feedback on the mission.
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Or what are some things about our values that you think you want to give us feedback on?
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It's going to be something like that.
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And the wrong thing to do would just be like, it all sounds great.
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I think I'd fit in here.
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It's not skeptical enough.
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They want to hear some skepticism.
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The skeptical enough approach would say something like, you know what?
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I'm not really sold on the mission.
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You guys are basically trying to do safety for everyone and everything.
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And not every company in this space is doing that.
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So what if they get there first because they're cutting those corners.
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Great answer.
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Healthy amount of skepticism included in your answer.
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Next, they're going to ask you about moral dilemmas from your past.
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What that means is the question can, again, it can take a lot of different shapes, but it's going to be something that's going to bring up a conflict within you.
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Tell me about a time you had a moral conflict at work, or tell me about a time you had to build something that was against your values,
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or tell me about a time where you did something at work that didn't sit right with you.
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It's going to be something like that.
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And the three levels of answers here, right?
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And let's just be honest, every single tech company in the world for the most part is doing some legally or ethically questionable things.
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The first mistake is to not mention one.
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If you're trying to save face because you don't want to admit to anything that sat wrong with you in the past, that's a big mistake.
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I would think a common one.
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As we go up, it gets a little bit less common.
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So that's the most common mistake.
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Probably the least common mistake, but still possible, is to admit something that is so sketchy that it actually becomes a huge red flag.
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Now, the chances of you doing this are quite low, but just to be absolutely clear, this would be something like, there was a recent LinkedIn viral post about this person who,
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They were admitting that their early stage of their company was they would join meetings with a bot note taker, but it was really them.
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And then everything blew up because all the data privacy concerns.
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So that would be a level that's too sketchy to admit.
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But let's say we want to find that nice middle zone, right?
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How sketchy can we be to make Anthropic like us?
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And that's what we want.
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We want to say, you know, maybe there's this one time where we were getting some user data
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and sending it to another location that was not exactly legal.
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And we didn't exactly get the permission from the user to do that.
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That's step one, admitting that.
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Step two, to make this good answer even better, is you got to be ready to tell them that you didn't like the way it made you feel.
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You got to tell them it made you a little bit uncomfortable.
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And they're going to kind of investigate this in a lot of different ways.
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They can ask you who you talk to about that dilemma.
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They could say, what did they say?
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How did that make you feel?
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Have you felt differently now, but you've had a chance to look back on it?
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All of it's wrapped up in finding a past sketchy situation, having that sketchiness not sit right with you,
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actually doing some work to try to have would sit right with you.
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And still, it doesn't sit right with you.
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It sounds crazy.
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And that's the way to pass this interview.
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In this round, you're also going to get asked these kind of normal big tech behavioral questions
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that are hard and you can definitely fail them, but we don't need to go into them because we actually go over them much more comprehensively in our behavioral course.
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But just for the record, these are things like tell me about a time you had a conflict.
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Tell me about a time you gave tough feedback, received tough feedback, a time you had a solution you thought was wrong, a time you had to go above and beyond your job description.
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So that's it.
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Make sure you have some past sketchy experiences, not too sketchy, but not not sketchy enough.
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And do not be comfortable with how that sketchiness made you feel.
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And get out there at Anthropic and any other company and break a leg.
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Vocabulary and speaking notes for this lesson
This B2 speaking lesson is built on the video “Anthropic Culture Fit”. The speaker keeps coming back to these words: sketchy, mission, Anthropic, feedback, mistake. This video has 83 sentences and 1003 words to shadow. The speech runs for 4:38. The speaker talks fast, about 217 words per minute, so expect linked and reduced sounds. 90% of the words are among the 3,000 most common in English, so the vocabulary is easy to follow.
Key vocabulary in this video
The 14 most advanced words in the video, with pronunciation and meaning:
| Word | Pronunciation | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| sketchy adjective | /ˈskɛt͡ʃi/ | Roughly or hastily laid out; intended for later refinement. |
| sketchiness noun | The property of being sketchy. | |
| skeptical adjective | /ˈskɛptɪkəl/ | Having, or expressing doubt; questioning. |
| counterintuitive adjective | /ˌkaʊntəɹɪnˈtuɪtɪv/ | Contrary to intuition or common sense. |
| ethically adverb | /ˈɛθɪkəli/ | In an ethical manner. |
| skepticism noun | /ˈskɛp.tɪˌsɪ.zəm/ | The practice or philosophy of being a skeptic. |
| dilemma noun | /daɪˈlɛmə/ | A circumstance in which a choice must be made between two or more alternatives that seem equally undesirable. |
| behavioral adjective | /bɪˈheɪvjəɹəl/ | Of or relating to behavior. |
| comprehensively adverb | In a comprehensive manner; in an all-inclusive or wide-ranging fashion. | |
| discomfort noun | /dɪsˈkʌmfɚt/ | Mental or bodily distress. |
| questionable adjective | /ˈkwɛst͡ʃənəbl̩/ | Problematic; open to doubt or challenge. |
| viral adjective | /ˈvaɪɹəl/ | Of or relating to a biological virus. |
| uncomfortable adjective | /ʌnˈkʌm.fɚ.tə.bl̩/ | Not comfortable; causing discomfort. |
| wrap verb | /ɹæp/ | To enclose (an object) completely in any flexible, thin material such as fabric or paper. |
Phrasal verbs you will hear
| Word | Meaning |
|---|---|
| bring up verb | To mention. |
| blow up verb | To explode or be destroyed by explosion. |
| get out verb | To leave or escape. |
| get past verb | To continue around a blockage; to get around (something); to surpass something that is in the way. |
| go over verb | To look at carefully; to scrutinize; to analyze. |
| go up verb | To move upwards. |
Sentences worth repeating
Short, complete lines from the video that you can reuse in everyday conversation:
- You don't bring up sketchy things.
- Let's start with the easier problem.
- I think I'd fit in here.
- The skeptical enough approach would say something like, you know what?
- How did that make you feel?
Pronunciation to watch
The speaker uses 20 contractions and reduced forms, such as they're, don't, didn't. Say them the short way, as you hear them.
- Long words — get the stress right: counterintuitive /ˌkaʊntəɹɪnˈtuɪtɪv/, ethically /ˈɛθɪkəli/, skepticism /ˈskɛp.tɪˌsɪ.zəm/, behavioral /bɪˈheɪvjəɹəl/, uncomfortable /ʌnˈkʌm.fɚ.tə.bl̩/
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 sketchy, sketchiness, skeptical.
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.