If you’re a non-native speaker HR professional working in an international environment, chances are you have a secret fear: the fear of making mistakes in front of native speakers. But you’re not alone. In fact, many of our corporate learners share this fear. The thing is, most interview guides out there are aimed at candidates, and that's why we decided to change this and create this HR Expert Series.
This HR Series is made up of four parts where we will cover writing strong job descriptions, successful interviews, negotiating salary and benefits, and effective onboarding. It is aimed at non-native recruiters and HR professionals and here you will find simple ways to quickly improve your business English. Learn professional vocabulary and expressions, communication tips, and templates. If you need to practice this with a teacher, learn more about our 1-on-1 online business English training.
“I am scared of making grammar mistakes in front of native speakers.” This guide will show you a few simple techniques and phrases to boost your fluency when interviewing. The next challenge we often hear is this: “I am fine with my prepared questions but when a candidate asks me something, I get nervous about answering correctly.”
Preparing your questions ahead of time is one thing. But what happens when you have to go off-script? For example, a candidate asks a question and you have to respond in the moment. Or you need to clarify or pose a follow-up question?
This edition will deal with spontaneously responding to candidate questions with confidence, as well as clarifying candidate responses with great follow-up questions. Let’s start with boosting fluency and reducing grammar errors.
Firstly, it’s important to remember that no one is perfect. Even native speakers make some grammar mistakes from time to time. These tips can help you to improve your fluency, even if you are not 100% confident during the interview.
Of course, you prepare your questions and potentially follow-up questions ahead of time. But do you practice reading them out loud? Most people tend to write them down on paper and only run through them mentally.
Go through your questions out loud with a colleague. If you are interviewing candidates via Skype, or over the phone, practice using a Skype or phone call ahead of time. This helps you to get used to the lower sound quality. If you have already read your questions out loud a few times, it will seem much more natural during the interview.
If you notice that you made a mistake, politely correct yourself and move on. Use these phrases to swiftly correct yourself:
Examples:
You’ve already made a script with questions and possible follow-up questions. But that doesn’t mean you can’t reuse it. If you are unsure about a certain construction or phrase, then try to modify a question or answer that you already know is correct. Usually, by changing just one or two words you can generate a completely new question.
Example:
Fillers are phrases that don’t really carry specific meaning. But native speakers use them all the time. Why? They link two thoughts or ideas together in an idiomatic way. They also give you valuable time to think of what you want to say next. This is great if a candidate hits you with a question unexpectedly.
Example:
Interviewer: Could you describe your biggest challenge as a project leader at your last company?
Candidate: Sure, for me, it was keeping everyone on the same page. I found that most teams were using different project management tools. Marketing would use Trello and the developers would use Jira. So keeping track of cross-team progress was a little tricky. How is it at Numbers Ltd - do you all use one project tool?
Interviewer: Let me see, actually most teams here are using Wrike. So it’s pretty uniform.
Use fillers to link your phrases. You can also combine fillers with each other. But don’t overdo it.
In general, it is better to use the “would” “could” and “can” forms rather than direct imperative forms. Why? It ensures that each question is phrased politely. In English, politeness is important in an interview situation. Politeness is often achieved by making a question less direct:
Examples:
Another great way to keep your questions polite is to use these diminutive forms:
These words keep your questions polite and keep the candidate at ease. They make direct questions a lot friendlier: "Tell me a little about yourself."
Diminutives also work well with indirect questions: "Could you tell me a little about yourself?"
Use “a little bit more” when you want more detail from the candidate: "Could you explain that a little bit more?" / "Could be a little bit more specific?"
The combination of indirect questions and diminutives will help keep your questions both polite and approachable.
Use the “we,” “us,” and “our” forms when talking about your company. Avoid using third-person phrases. These tend to sound rather impersonal. Instead, replace these phrases with a “we” phrase.
Example:
Finally, try and be as relaxed as possible. Relaxing helps improve language use. Warming your voice up before the interview is a great way to relax and prepare your voice. This video has some tips to warm up your voice. You may feel silly, but it totally helps relax your vocal cords. Speaking at a slower pace can also help you to control your nerves.
Time to answer the second learner challenge: dealing with non-scripted candidate questions and responses. First, let’s look at how to deal with candidate questions.
Candidate questions are likely to fall into one of three categories:
In case number 1, you are able to respond fluently. Hopefully, the majority of questions land in this category. But how should you deal with cases 2 and 3? In case number 2, when you understand their question but are unsure how to answer, try creating a variation on a phrase you already know as in tip number 3 above. You can further improve your responses by combining this simple variation with a general phrase:
Example:
Candidate question: How do you allocate free learning time to candidates?
If you know the phrase “to offer candidates” you can use this as the basis for the answer. Now using one of the generic questions answering phrases below you can make your answer seem completely fresh.
Response: Our approach to learning and development is to offer 2 hours a week of paid training courses.
Helpful phrases for answering questions:
Combine these phrases with phrases you already know to create great responses. In part 1 of this guide we put together an awesome list of action verbs, adjectives and phrases so check it out!
[Running Successful Interviews: Download it in PDF]
What about case number 3, when you don’t fully understand the response? Let’s look at an example:
Candidate: Could you tell me a little more about your scrutiny processes?
“Scrutiny” may be an unfamiliar word. But you can still get around this by asking the candidate for more detail. Often asking someone to be more specific causes them to use a synonym of the tricky word. Synonyms increase your chance of understanding.
Interviewer: Could you be a little more specific?
Candidate: Sure, I wondered how your team assesses the quality of the computer code.
Specification questions:
Use these specification questions when you don’t fully understand the meaning of a candidate’s question.
Native speakers often pose questions without question words. Let’s take the example from above to see this in action: "Sure, I wondered how your team assesses the quality of the computer code."
The key is the intonation. Rising intonation indicates a question even if it is just a normal sentence. But this is not always easy to recognize. There is another way. Try looking out for these phrases that often signify that the candidate would like more information.
Question signifiers:
In an ideal world, all candidate responses would be both comprehensive and easy to understand. But this is not always the case.
For both cases we recommend using specification questions. In case number 1, you will need to query a particular part of their answer. One great framework for doing this is shown below in the advanced strategy. In case number 2, you can use general specification questions to elicit a synonym from the candidate.
Here are some alternative specification questions:
The STAR technique is a helpful framework for understanding and clarifying candidate responses. This framework is often used by candidates to structure their response. By using this as a recruiter, you can easily segment which part of the candidate response you want to clarify.
STAR? Situation > Task > Action > Result
Question: Could you describe how you increased the number of new leads in 2017?
Candidate response:
By dividing candidate responses into the four categories of the STAR framework, you can use specific vocabulary to get more detailed information.
Situation phrases:
Candidates will often begin their response by describing the general situation. The situation phase of an answer is all about identifying key challenges and adding background information.
Task phrases:
In the task phases of the response, the candidate will attempt to outline their key areas of responsibility. This could involve an explanation of their position and the tasks they were expected to perform.
Action phrases:
In the action phase, the candidate will describe what actions they performed to overcome the challenge they outline in the situation phase.
Result phrases:
The result phases summaries the overall outcome, the results of the action taken. A candidate will often use figures or data to quantify results.
Interviewer: Welcome to Numbers Inc. We are excited to learn more about your profile. Could you start off by telling us a little about your last role?
Candidate: Thanks for inviting me! (Situation) Sure, so I was recruited to Letters Inc in 2016. They were looking to boost sales figures. (Task) I entered the company as an enterprise sales rep. (Action) I would regularly close high-value contracts. (Result) I was the top-performing sales rep for the last two quarters of my time there.
Interviewer: (S) Could you provide a little more background on your first few months at the company? Were sales figures decreasing?
Candidate: Actually, they were hiring following positive forecasts. The new sales reps were part of their expansion plan. Presumably, it's a similar story here at Numbers inc.
Interviewer: (T) Well, actually, our hiring process is following a very successful 2018. So you mentioned you were a sales rep. Who were you reporting into?
Candidate: I was reporting into a divisional head of sales.
Interviewer: (T) So you didn't have a team to manage?
Candidate: Not at that time. But after my first year, I was actually offered a more senior position and in that capacity, five junior sales reps reported into me.
Interviewer: (A) Ok great. Could you describe your sales approach? What was your strategy?
Candidate: (A) Sure. In general, I would research a company in great detail. And then based on their interactions in our CRM, come up with a tailored strategy and nurture them at each stage of awareness. This could involve sending them links to webinars, providing product brochures to explaining specific features and our product roadmap.
Interviewer: (R) Thanks for the clarification. Finally, you stated you were a top-performing sales rep. Could you provide a little more detail on that?
Candidate: Sure, so I was the top-performing sales rep for Q3 and Q4 of 2017 based on the absolute figures for new business deals. I focused mainly on enterprise customers.
The interviewer was able to use clarification questions from the STAR framework to get a lot of detail from the candidate. By being specific with the questions asked, it also kept the conversation very fluent. This combined with fillers really improved the level of fluency. We hope this guide will help boost your language confidence when interviewing candidates.
That’s it for now. Hopefully, these tips will help you the next time you have to write a job post.
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