Shadowing Practice: Top 10 Answers to Interview Questions - Learn English Speaking with YouTube
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I'm going to help you craft your answers to the top 10 questions so that you can land your ideal job.
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I'm going to help you craft your answers to the top 10 questions so that you can land your ideal job.
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As a hiring manager and a CEO,
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I've done thousands of interviews and I've interviewed thousands of people.
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And so I can tell you exactly what an employer is looking for.
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But on the other side,
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I was an employee for years before I had my own business.
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So I know what it's like to be on the other side of the table.
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And so I feel like I have a unique perspective that I can bring together to present to you these answers.
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As a bonus at the end of this video,
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I'm also going to give you the answer to one of the most important questions
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that can dictate whether you get more money or less money in your new role.
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The number one question that people ask an interview is not really a question.
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It's tell me about yourself.
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An open ended question that most people misinterpret.
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Why do they misinterpret it?
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I can tell you that nine times out of 10 when I say tell me about yourself to somebody on interview,
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what they come back with is they want to tell me their whole life story.
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Well, I grew up in Connecticut and I went to listen, nobody gets up.
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They don't care about your life story.
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They don't care where you grow up.
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You're wasting their time.
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They need to get to the next interview.
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What they actually want to know is give me your sales pitch as to why you're fit for this role.
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They want to hear your sales pitch.
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Why are you uniquely qualified?
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What experiences do you have that relate to the role that then make you the right candidate?
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What they're really asking when they say,
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tell me about yourself, is they're saying,
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what value do you bring to this company and role?
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So I want you to not even think when someone says,
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tell me about yourself, switch.
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It's what value do you bring to this company and role?
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How do you go about answering this question.
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The first piece is what you want to say is where you've been.
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So say you're applying for a customer success representative or a customer success manager.
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I've been a customer success manager at three of the fortune 500 companies
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and over the last eight years
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and what I was able to do with those three companies is drive x y and z results.
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So the first thing you want to do is say what you have been,
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the exact title and role,
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and what results you have driven.
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So title, results.
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The second piece once you've explained the title and results is what are your biggest strengths.
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I've been a customer success manager at these three fortune 500 companies.
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I drove these results where I increased retention from 10% retention to 80% retention.
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And my biggest strengths are blank.
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My biggest strengths are that I'm fantastic at decreasing time to value for customers.
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In fact, at my last company,
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I was able to decrease time to value by 20% in just a quarter.
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And then you want to bring it home by saying,
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so the reason that I applied to work here is relate it back to why that pertains to the role.
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And I saw that you were looking for a customer or success manager to get clients ramped up and onboarded more quickly.
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And I figured that would be a good fit because I've done that in all these last three roles.
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And I was able to actually increase our revenue per account by $4,000.
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You're going to all tie it back to how it relates to you applying for this job.
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So where have you been?
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What results has it driven?
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What's your biggest strength?
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And how does that correlate to this role here?
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Next time someone asks me, tell me about yourself.
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Don't tell them about yourself.
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Tell them why you're qualified for this role.
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A hiring manager usually makes the decision as to whether
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or not they're going to hire a person in the first 15 minutes of the interview.
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And this is actually where most people drop the ball.
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They go through all the effort.
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They go and fill out the application.
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They research the company.
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They submit the application.
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They write a cover letter.
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They do all this pre-work to get to the interview.
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And then they're not thinking about how they're going to answer the questions.
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This isn't to give you some scripts in terms of,
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I want you to regurgitate this on your interview.
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This is to give you the framework to understand what is the employer actually asking
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when they ask you these top 10 questions.
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The second most asked question on an interview is walk me through your resume.
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What I see a lot is that people go line by line.
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It's like first I worked at Subway,
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then I worked at this.
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I had an internship and it's like nobody again gives a fuck.
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They want to hear about the relevant experience.
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So the first thing you want to do is you want to skip through anything that's not related to this job.
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If it doesn't pertain to this job in any way and it adds no value to them,
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then don't talk about it.
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So only pick the experiences that relate to this specific role.
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Take those experiences and translate them to them.
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They've already read your resume.
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That's why you're here for the interview.
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They don't want you to read it off and say the exact same things from the resume.
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What they want you to do is talk about how each of those experiences translates to this role.
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Because you've done the research on the company,
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you've done the research on the role,
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and you can translate it for them.
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The third most common question asked in an interview is,
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why do you want to work at this company?
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I have done thousands of interviews.
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And most of the time,
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surprisingly, this answer is not answered correctly.
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What they want to hear is how much research you've done on the company and how excited you are about the role.
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They want to hear someone that relates to the mission.
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They really live by the values.
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They really feel like this role is exactly what's meant for them.
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And this is part of their career path that can get them to their ultimate goal.
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What they don't want is for you to talk about the selfish reasons as to why you apply.
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We all know that most of the reasons people apply for jobs are they see really good pay, good benefits.
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There's a lot of benefits to them.
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When you're looking for a job,
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you're looking for the pieces that pertain to you.
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You're like, this is how this would make my life better.
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That doesn't mean that that's what you want to express in an interview
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because they already by default assume that if you apply for that job,
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those are things that are non-negotiables for you.
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Pay, your benefits, work remote or not remote, those kinds of things.
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What they're looking for in that question is they want to hear how selfless you are.
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They want to hear how company-centric versus self-centric you are.
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And if you say anything about pay,
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benefits, working remote, that's all going in self-centric bucket,
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which they don't want to hire those people.
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What they want to hear is mission, values, vision, career path.
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That goes in company-centric bucket.
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And so you want to make sure that you have a company-centric answer to that.
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Research the company, look at their missions,
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look at their values, study their glass door,
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look at their LinkedIn, and look at all the things
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that you like about that company and have an answer prepared that is company-centric, not self-centric.
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So the way you want to frame this answer is really three R's.
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Research, recognition, and right fit.
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So research, tie your answer into,
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well, when I was looking at the company,
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what I found on your LinkedIn was your mission talks about recognition.
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I love the fact that your values talk about x,
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y, and z because I actually relate to that because I live my life in x,
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y, and z way and then right fit.
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And because of that, I felt like I was the right fit for this role
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because those things resonated with me so much.
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Research, recognition, right fit.
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The fifth most common question asked is what would you consider to be your weakness?
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Most people get this one wrong because what most people say is something like,
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I just work too hard or I'm just such a perfectionist.
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You know, I just tend to do too much.
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I don't even know if I've had someone answer this one well.
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What I would like to explain is that,
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one, everyone knows that's bullshit.
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Perfectionist.
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Haven't heard that one in the last seven interviews I did today.
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Worked too hard.
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So did Sally, Gary, and this guy who eventually got fired because they were lazy as shit.
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Nobody believes when you say that about yourself.
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So don't pick something that's actually a strength disguised as a weakness.
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Actually tell them what your weaknesses are and then explain how you are resilient despite those weaknesses.
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So this is a chance for you to admit a flaw and then talk about how you handle those flaws.
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Here's an example.
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Say that you're a customer success manager.
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Maybe talk about the fact that you're bad at math and that was something you've struggled with your whole life.
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And here's how you've overcome being bad at math.
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I took tutoring.
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I tried this.
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I did all these things.
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It's still gotten me down because I'm still pretty bad at math,
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but I've been working on it by taking these lessons
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and doing this online course so I can get better at math
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because I do think it'll help me in different areas of my life.
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Like the fact that I rent Airbnbs on the side and I don't know how to do the math.
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Basically, what you want to do is pick a weakness that doesn't pertain to the role.
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So it's not something that will detract from you getting this job,
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but it is something that's a weakness for you.
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The sixth question that people ask on interviews is the most common,
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is what makes you unique?
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When someone's asking what makes you unique,
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they don't really want to know anything about,
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you know, what you did in high school or college,
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or I got this, or I was the scholar of something.
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They don't care about any of those things.
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What they want to know is why should they hire you and not somebody else?
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That is what that question means.
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Why are you unique to this role?
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Why should I hire you and not the other five people I've interviewed today?
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Tell me now.
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That's what this question is asking.
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When you are presenting, why should they hire you and not somebody else?
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What I want you to think about is unique pairings.
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So what is it that makes you different than others in what you do?
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So if you look at some of the most talented people,
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they typically have unique pairings in terms of skill sets.
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The best person in a creative role might also be very organized.
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That's a unique pairing because typically people in creative roles are actually not organized
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and the fact that somebody is organized or extremely meticulous would be a unique pairing.
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Say that you're applying for a financial role
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and then you say actually I have really high you know people skills
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and I actually have done lots of presentations on leadership and management all these other things.
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Wow that's a unique pairing because not only am I getting
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that person that's going to fill a financial role
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but they can also contribute to all these other things in the company because of this skill set they have.
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When that person asks you what makes you unique then you want to think about what is your unique pairing.
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What's a skill set that you have that is contrary to a different skill set and together are rare to be seen.
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The seventh most commonly asked question is why are you leaving your current role?
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So if you currently are in a job,
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they're going to ask you why are you leaving that role?
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Here's what myself as an employer really wants to know.
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What are the red flags that are the reason that you're leaving
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and do they exist here in this company so that I can just stop this now because maybe it's not a fit.
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And that's what they really want to know is are there the same things there that there are here.
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And so if there's any crossover,
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then that's not something that they would want because they don't want you to just leave this job too.
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What they don't want is they don't want you to sit there
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and complain about your last job to talk shit about your last employer.
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Even if you're like, oh,
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listen, if you say I'm not trying to talk shit,
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you're talking shit because you're just literally what's going to follow that is shit talking.
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But the fact that you said,
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I'm not trying to talk shit, you're hiding it.
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They can sense that.
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Don't do it.
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Just say, here's the reasons I left.
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And I don't think that pertains to this role here.
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Even better is to say,
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here's the reasons I left.
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And the reason that I'm so interested in this job is because you've expressed these things,
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which are the things that I want that I didn't have here.
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The eighth most commonly asked question is,
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what are your career aspirations?
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What does an employer actually want to know?
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They want to know how long you're going to be here.
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That is what it means when they say,
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what are your career aspirations?
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Don't bullshit.
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It's explain what you want to get from this job.
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Explain how long you see yourself being here.
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And explain if you're flexible or rigid in your ways.
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Some people want to be a certain place from maybe 100 employees to 300 employees and then they're out.
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Some people want to complete what I call a mission while they're there to build a certain something.
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And then after they've built that thing, they're gone.
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So explain what your objective is in applying and working at this company.
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And then also explain that if you were ever to transition out,
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you can always talk about,
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I can see myself being here for four years building X department, Y department.
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Beyond that, I don't know if there's room for me,
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but I can see myself being here for and committing a solid four years.
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And obviously, you know, when the time comes that I was no longer needed,
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there's no more growth, I would always make sure to backfill myself because that's what people are really scared of.
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They're scared of you leaving and not backfilling yourself.
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Be honest, but also talk about the things that you would do
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if the time came when you were no longer a fifth.
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The ninth most commonly asked question is what are you looking for in a new position?
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So when someone asks this,
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what they want is not a list of all your demands and desires that are again,
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selfish and not company centric.
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What they want is to understand what are the parameters that would make this a great job for you?
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What is your potential that's untapped and in what environment would you thrive?
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And mostly what they want to know is do your career goals align with the position?
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Your strengths fit with the role and do your desires fit with the role?
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Someone might have strengths that fit with the role,
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but their desires for their career don't necessarily.
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And so they want to make sure that the desire also fits the role along with the strength.
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So what you want to do is explain what kind of environment you'd be best utilized in.
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So an example of that would be what I'm looking for is a place where I can really fully utilize myself.
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I can build a department from scratch,
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which I know I can do because I've done it three other times and I have the autonomy to do so.
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But I also have the support and clarity for leadership where they're telling me,
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hey, we'd rather have you do it this way or that way.
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Hey, that's not exactly how the company needs it.
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That's what I'm really looking for is a place where I can have autonomy,
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but also support and clarity.
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And the last most frequently asked question in a job interview is,
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do you have any questions for me?
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This is always what people are going to ask towards the end of the interview,
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sometimes even in the beginning of the interview.
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And here's what they want.
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They want to know that you have thought about this decision.
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What they don't want is somebody who is thoughtless,
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who says, no, I really don't have any other questions.
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You don't have any other questions about the place you want to be for the next two to four years?
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That's bananas.
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Most people have questions.
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Most people just haven't sat and taken the time to think about what their questions are.
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So here's how I would answer that question.
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One, be specific.
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Pull out a line from the job description that was on the posted site and say,
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I have a question about this piece that you wrote in the job description.
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One, that shows that you read the job description,
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which a lot of people don't do it thoroughly.
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And then two, it shows that you were thoughtful enough to ask a question about it.
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The second thing you can do is you can ask,
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how would I exceed your expectations in this role?
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The best interviews I've had have been where candidates have asked me,
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how could I not meet your expectations, but exceed your expectations?
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And that's a great question for an employer because then they're thinking,
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How would this person impress me?
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And you can start off on an even better flip
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because you can get in there
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and right off the bat You know what you can do to impress
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that person And then the third thing that you can ask is what would my onboarding look like?
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What would my 30 60 90 look like?
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The reason I ask about onboarding or 30 60 90 is important
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because it shows
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that you can see yourself being in the company You have enough foresight to think what's it gonna look like
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when I get in there?
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And how can I prepare now which shows again that you're thoughtful
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and you're diligent and as a bonus question a lot of people ask me Layla,
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how do I answer the question,
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what do you want to get paid?
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Here's the thing.
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That's actually not something you can ask during a job interview.
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Nobody is actually allowed to answer that question or ask that question.
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So if somebody asks you,
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what are you being paid now?
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You actually don't need to answer it.
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So that is something a lot of people don't know.
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Now, what a lot of people do ask the way to get around it is to say,
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what is your goal salary?
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So a lot of employers will ask,
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tell me what your goal salary or goal compensation is.
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And here's how I would suggest to answer that to make the most amount of money.
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One, you have to understand that overshooting this is going to stab you in the face.
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No employer is going to hire somebody who say the job is market value at $100,000 and you say $200,000.
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They're just not going to do that.
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And trust me, I have had that happen.
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And it's not appreciated because it's unrealistic.
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So here's what you want to do to prepare for that question.
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One, you want to research the role.
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So go on salary.com, payscale.com,
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see how much that title and with your years of experience is worth in the market.
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Now, the second thing you want to do is just like when you buy a house,
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you look at cops in the neighborhood,
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go look at companies that are similar and what are they paying for that role?
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Because the two pieces that go into determining compensation are the hard facts of researching and finding market value,
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and then also just taking from word on the street,
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like what are people actually paying in similar companies?
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Because it might be a little different.
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Then you want to use that to come up with the range that you want to present to that person.
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So given that, come up with a range, make it fairly flexible.
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And then when they ask what's your goal compensation,
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you can say the higher range.
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However, you can say the range,
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you know, my goal would be to be between 110 to 130,
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preferably on the higher end.
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Based on my research, you know,
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I've seen that companies like x,
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y, and z are paying about blank,
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and then companies that x,
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y, and z are paying blank.
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And if you look on payscaleandsalary.com, they're showing these.
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So when you're presenting that to them,
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you come off like a logical,
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rational thinking adult, ultimately, the way that you present it
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and showing and telling you that you've done the research will probably get you paid more than if you don't.
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About This Lesson
In this lesson, you will practice answering common interview questions effectively, focusing on the number one question: "Tell me about yourself." You will learn how to craft concise and impactful responses that highlight your qualifications and strengths. By understanding what employers are really looking for, you'll improve your confidence in interviews, enhance your English speaking practice, and develop skills that are essential not only for job interviews but also for professional interactions. This tailored practice will utilize the technique known as shadowspeak, which emphasizes repetition and clarity to enhance fluency and retention.
Key Vocabulary & Phrases
- Value – The worth or usefulness of something, especially in relation to a job role.
- Retention – The ability to keep customers or clients engaged and satisfied.
- Time to Value – The time taken for a product or service to start delivering benefits to the customer.
- Sales Pitch – A persuasive argument or message intended to convince someone to buy a product or accept a proposal.
- Fortune 500 – A ranking of the top 500 companies in the United States made by Fortune magazine based on their revenues.
- Strengths – The qualities or skills that make someone particularly good at a job.
- Results – The outcomes or impacts of your actions or efforts in previous roles.
- Candidate – A person who is being considered for a job position.
Practice Tips
To maximize your learning experience, consider employing shadowspeaks techniques while practicing. Begin by watching the video transcript at a moderate pace, listening carefully to the speaker's tone and articulation. Then, try shadowing—a method where you repeat what you hear immediately after the speaker. This is particularly effective because it helps you to mimic the natural flow, speed, and intonation of spoken English, crucial for IELTS speaking practice.
When shadowing, focus on clarity and emotion. Practice emphasizing key phrases, such as "what value do you bring to this company," to gain confidence and improve your speaking rhythm. Repeat this exercise several times, gradually increasing the speed to match that of the speaker. Don't just recite words; instead, visualize yourself in an interview setting engaging confidently with a potential employer. Your ability to convey your message succinctly will significantly enhance your English speaking practice and prepare you for real-life situations. Aim for fluency by integrating feedback into your practice sessions, and continuously refine your delivery and content as you progress.
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.
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