Shadowing Practice: How to exponentially increase your interview success rate - Learn English Speaking with Video

Alright, so why should you listen to some random ass dude with a white t-shirt on standing in front of a whiteboard?

My name's Matt.

I'm a current strategy and operations associate at Google.

Prior to that, I was a management consultant at BCG, and before that, spent some time in investment banking as well.

And so while I can't say that I've got it all figured out, I have picked up a thing or two about interviewing over the course of my career.

And today, I just want to share with you some of those learnings.

And specifically we're going to be talking about how to get your interview to think to themselves after they've spoken with you,

holy sh, I need this guy or girl on my team.

Let's get into it.

Now the first thing we have to understand is what is an interview, right?

And now I know most of you are probably thinking, I know what an interview is.

It's just when you go into a room

or into a meeting with somebody else on the team working at the company

that you want to work at

and you have a conversation for about 30 minutes where they mostly ask you questions about your background

and your experiences and maybe you get a chance to ask them questions as well, but it's mostly where you are basically telling them about yourself and why you deserve this job.

Now if you were thinking something along the lines of what I just described, then you've got it all wrong.

Interviewing is not so much about what you have to bring to the table.

There's really just one question that is going through your interviewer's mind when they are

talking to a bunch of different candidates and that is do I want this person on my team, right?

So this is the only question that they need to answer.

Let's say they're talking to five, ten,

twenty people, all of whom might have similar levels of education, similar background experiences

if you've made it past the HR screen and the application process and you've made it into the interview room,

then that already means that you have the basic qualifications that they are looking for.

But if interviewing was purely about hiring someone who can do the job, then what's even the point of meeting and speaking to someone in person

if you can see from their resume that they already have the prerequisite experience

and education required to do the basic tasks, right?

And the reason for this is because, again, interviewing is actually a deeply interpersonal thing.

And although the interviewer may think that they are trying to hire someone based on,

say, qualification or hard stats, and although the candidate probably also thinks that,

oh, I need to demonstrate that I have the qualifications and I am the right person, I am the smartest person, I am the most accomplished person,

I am the person with the most experience, and then I'll get the job, I would argue that that is not actually what's at play.

I want to caveat that yes, you do obviously need to have a solid resume

and you do need to have the right experiences to show that you will be able to do the job.

But again, 90% of people, 99% of people do not make it past the application,

especially when you are going for extremely competitive positions in industries like investment banking, management consulting, or big tech, right?

There's a thousand applications for every one position, right?

And so out of those thousand people, there's probably like two to three hundred that could probably do the job equally well, but only one or two people are actually going to get the job.

And so if you think about it, interviewing and landing the job has actually, I would argue, very little to do with whether or not you can do the job well.

And it has much more to do with whether the person interviewing

and making the decision whether or not to pass people on thinks that they want you on their team.

But if we've established already that it doesn't have nearly as much to do with qualifications or hard stats as we think,

then what does it actually require to get someone to think to themselves afterwards that they want you on their team?

Alright, so I've written a few things down here.

And the first is what do they want?

Well, they want someone who is impressive but not arrogant.

They want someone personable but still professional and essentially they want someone who won't embarrass them.

Now let me talk a little bit about each of these three.

So impressive but not arrogant.

This is a big one because one mistake that a lot of people do, especially if you're extremely accomplished and you have a excellent resume,

maybe you have a perfect GPA, you went to an Ivy League school and you have some awesome internship experience.

A big problem that people with these types of backgrounds sometimes run into is they

are very impressive but they come across as arrogant

or they come across as a little bit too full of themselves and that is a major turn off for the interviewer.

Again you have to remember the dynamics of being in an interview.

Your interviewer is coming from a position of power really

because they have the ability to basically say yes and move you on in the process,

or they can end you right then and there if they don't like you.

And so as the candidate, you're kind of coming to them from a position of less power.

And so the last thing you want to do is come across as someone who is extremely arrogant, even if you have a lot of accomplishments to back it up.

This is kind of like social skills one-on-one, but you would be surprised how many people in an interview room try to brag about themselves

because they think that they have to play up their strengths

and really talk a lot about all the things that they've done

because they think that after rattling down a list of 50 different achievements

that they've done and all these awards that they've gotten

that somehow the person on the other side will be impressed

and the person on the other end of the table will like them and want to pass them on.

Now here's the thing, right?

We've been conditioned as students when applying to college to basically

inflate our applications and to play up all of the strengths that we have.

And essentially a college application that a student submits is like a brag document.

It basically says, oh I did this, I took all of these hard classes, I got this GPA, I got these awards,

I participated in 50 different extracurriculars, I was the captain of a sports team, I started this club at my school,

blah blah blah, I did all these extracurriculars.

And the way that college applications works is the people

that have all of these achievements and are able to brag about it effectively and really loudly, they often are the ones that end up getting into top schools.

But on the other hand, when it comes to interviewing for a job, things are very different because you have to remember this is much more of a person-to-person interaction

and then when somebody interviews you, what they're thinking about is, oh, would I want this person sitting next to me, working next to me every single day?

Would I be able to stand their personality?

And so it has a lot more to do with them liking you as a person than the achievements that you have.

I would say, of course you need to have the right experience, but again, you want to be impressive but not arrogant.

Secondly, personable but professional.

This is another area where sometimes people go too far in the other direction and they think to themselves,

oh I heard that someone said that I should talk to my interviewer like they're my best friend.

And then they become way too casual and they start like talking about all these random things in their personal life,

they're like opening up and they totally forget that this person on the other table is one, probably a stranger who has never met you so this is their first time speaking with you.

And secondly, this person is not just trying to have a conversation with you, they're trying to evaluate you and see how you would react

and in a way assess how you act in front of a client for example

if this is investment banking or consulting and

so the nuance here is you need to be personable enough

because you can't be like a robot

and you can't come across as someone who just spent 24 hours a day studying in college

and never got outside never never went to a party or never even had a conversation with someone.

But you also need to demonstrate that you're professional.

And that means that you understand that some things you just don't bring up in an interview.

And some things you just don't say in as casual of a way that you would say to, say, your best friend, for example.

And lastly, someone who won't embarrass them.

I know this probably seems obvious.

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Because of course, who wants to be the person that their friend

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or their mom or dad is embarrassed to admit that they are related to them or friends with them?

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Right, like who wants to be that person who nobody wants to associate with?

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No one, right?

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Unless you're just like weird for some reason.

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But most people don't want to be embarrassing.

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And so you should take that understanding and put yourself in your interviewer's shoes.

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If they vouch for you and if they pass you on in an interview, that's basically them in a way saying that, oh, this person has my stamp of approval.

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And so all the other interviewers after them, and if you end up getting the job, the people that you work with, they're all going to look at this person and say,

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hmm, did you really think that so-and-so was the right candidate?

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And it becomes quite problematic if you're not doing a good job, then they look bad.

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And so at the end of the day, the interviewer is not just assessing that you have the qualifications for the job, but they're also assessing, are you going to potentially embarrass me down the line?

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And this all feeds back into, again, do I actually want this person on my team, right?

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Okay, so taking a step back, you can see that there's a lot of nuance involved here because, you know, you want to be impressive but not arrogant.

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You want to be personable but professional still, and you don't want to be someone that they would be embarrassed to pass along.

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So then the natural next question is how do we address each of these things?

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How do we make sure that we are impressive but not arrogant?

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How do we make sure that we're personable but professional?

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And how do we make sure that they don't think we're going to embarrass them?

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Well, I'll tell you what we have to do.

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So in order to come across as impressive but not arrogant, this we can break into two pieces.

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Being impressive is more a function of the hard stats that you have and the experiences that you've had so far.

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So this is things like, you know, GPA, awards, and internships, slash work experience, right?

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These are the hard stats that most people think of that go on your resume.

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And not being arrogant, I mean, this to some of you isn't going to be a problem, but just to really lay it out to folks, because I'm assuming zero context here,

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not coming across as arrogant means that when you talk about yourself, you are humble, and you are still confident, but you are not arrogant.

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Confidence and arrogance are two different things.

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Confidence means being able to put your foot down and to state the facts and to be comfortable with who you are.

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Arrogance on the other hand is when you come across as thinking that you're better than someone because of your accomplishments.

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But moving to the second one, how do we come across as personable but still professional?

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Well, being personable is more about warmth, conveying warmth, right?

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So what does this mean?

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First of all, smile.

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Smile.

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You'd be surprised how many people go into an interview and if they think that they want to be really professional, they talk like this and then they lower their voice.

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And especially if you're interviewing for finance or law, which are very old school industries,

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you kind of talk like this and it's very like monotone and you try to act all professional, right?

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You're wearing your suit, I want to work in finance.

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No, that's not how you do it.

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Smile.

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Smiling is one of the most easy, universal tools to get someone else to like you a little bit more.

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And you should consider it a win if during your interview, you can get your interviewer to smile as well.

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Because if they smile, they feel good.

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And they associate those good feelings with you.

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So convey warmth, smile, be friendly, but at the same time, be professional.

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What does this mean?

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This means again, don't share too much basically.

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Now what is too much?

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Well, you sort of need to read the room here.

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If your interviewer is talking about how, oh, they've been having such a hard day, you know, work has been absolutely killing them, and they're just glad that the weekend is almost here,

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then it's probably also okay for you to share that finals have been wrapping up, and you've been grinding really hard, studying for exams,

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but you are also really excited to be able to speak with them and excited for the weekend ahead as well.

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But on the other hand, if, for example, the person interviewing you is very, like, cold and comes across as not really wanting to speak about anything personal,

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they're strictly business, then you should also adjust your tonality and your language to them and the way that they're speaking.

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Essentially, you want to be kind of like a chameleon

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and able to adjust the way that you talk and adjust your energy level according to the person that is interviewing you.

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Now, some of you might be thinking, well, but then that's kind of pretending, right?

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Because what if I'm not actually like that?

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Yes, of course, but you probably act differently towards different people in your life depending on who they are, right?

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Like the way that you talk with your mom and the way

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that you act with her is probably very different than the way that you talk with, like, your friends at school or outside of work, right?

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Similarly, the way that you might talk to, like, your girlfriend or your boyfriend would be very different than the way that you talk to a college professor.

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And so in the same way, it's no different here.

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You need to adjust your energy and just your overall demeanor to match the interviewer, because if you don't, then you run the risk of potentially coming across as not a good fit,

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aka they just didn't want you on their team.

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And so honestly, if you just make sure to do all of these things, right, you work really hard to get your stats and your work experience to be impressive,

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and you make sure that you come across as humble and confident, and you also make sure to convey warmth and smile in the interview,

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but you adjust your energy to the interviewer and you don't share too much unless prompted, then this last one sort of just comes naturally,

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which is that they won't feel like you're going to embarrass them.

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And if they don't feel that you'll embarrass them, and in fact they like you after having a 30-minute conversation with you, then you're in a very good position.

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Because again, it leads back up to this.

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They're going to want you on their team.

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So if this sounded more like a lecture on social dynamics or psychology and persuasion,

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that's because of all the methods of evaluating people.

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Whether it be tests, exams, group projects, or interviews.

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Interviews are the most personal way of assessing a person.

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Because seeing someone in person and seeing how they sound

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and speak and think is very different from say if someone just submitted an essay and I I can read their words, but I don't know what they're like.

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And because the stakes are so high for companies that are interviewing candidates,

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right, the cost to acquire a new full-time employee is extremely high for most companies

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because you have to understand that obviously they're paying you your salary and whatever compensation package you have,

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but also they're probably going negative in the beginning because your productivity is zero,

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if not negative productivity, in the beginning when you're just learning and getting started at the job.

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And so the ROI on a new employee, honestly, it probably only goes positive like six months or a year plus into the job.

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And so they're taking a big bet on you by hiring you, which is why the interview is so important and why it's so high stakes for the team, too.

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Because if they hire someone that they end up not liking or who's just a bad fit,

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then it's nobody's fault but theirs because they already screened you right and

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so again i'm gonna put a star here at the end

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of the day in an interview you have to demonstrate

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that you have the qualities and the skills

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and the experience required to do the job well

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but once you have demonstrated that to them then it becomes a lot more about whether

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or not the interviewer can think in their head to themselves afterwards

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that i want this person on my team and

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if the answer is yes then you're already 90 there i hope this was helpful let me Let me know

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if you have any questions in the comments below, and I'll see you guys in the next one.

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.

Shadowing Practice: How to exponentially increase your interview success rate - Learn English Speaking with Video

Why practice speaking with this video?

Grammar & Expressions in Context

Common Pronunciation Traps

What is the Shadowing Technique?