According to Donald Trump, “trade wars are easy to win.” However, as usual, reality appears to contradict Trump’s claims. In the current dispute between the U.S. and China, it doesn’t look like a winner will emerge any time soon. As CNN notes:
The Trump administration made good on its threat to raise tariffs on $200 billion worth of Chinese exports from 10% to 25%, marking a sharp rise in tensions between the world’s two largest economies. After months of talks aimed at ending a year-long dispute that has already hurt global growth and rattled stock markets around the world, the latest US salvo risks triggering a new wave of tit-for-tat responses.
Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on second round interviews in English.
You may know all about the basic English job interview questions. And you might be comfortable talking about your basic qualifications and experience. But most companies don’t stop the selection process after one round of interviews. They create a shortlist and invite a few outstanding candidates back for a second interview.
In many cases, that second interview is what we call a behavioral interview. Interviewers will ask questions about how you acted or reacted to challenges in past work, and how you dealt with or adapted to different situations. In this way, they can find out whether you have the right attitude, approach, and abilities for the job.
The behavioral interview is a special opportunity to demonstrate soft skills, such as leadership, or how you take a principled approach to problems. You might also want to show that you can remain calm in conflict. In many cases, the STAR approach can help shape your responses. This is when you describe four things: the situation, the task, the action, and the result. And in this kind of English interview, you have to be careful, because some interviewers will try to give you leading questions to get you to reveal mistakes or problems.
In today’s dialog, we’ll hear Kat, who is applying for a job with a private healthcare company. She is being interviewed by Denise. Denise is asking Kat some tough behavioral questions, and Kat is doing a good job of demonstrating some important soft skills.
Listening Questions
1. What example does Kat give of how she showed leadership and went above and beyond? 2. What situation does Kat describe in response to a question about an unpopular decision? 3. What attitude or attribute does Kat demonstrate when describing a situation of conflict?
Welcome back to Business English Pod for today’s lesson on succeeding in a technical interview in English.
While we have lots of lessons on job interviews in English, nearly all of them are about the first round of an interview, or the initial screening interview. If you succeed at that, you’ll get called back for a second interview. And it’s the English interview skills for these 2nd round interviews we want to look at now. Today, we’ll focus on the technical interview. And in the next lesson, we’ll look at the behavioral interview.
Just like any interview, preparation for a technical interview is key. And you can think beforehand about how you might show things like innovative experience or a learning attitude. You might also decide to highlight certain attributes that you think are beneficial, like being a team player.
But what about the problem-solving part of the technical job interview? Can you actually prepare for every possible problem? No, you can’t. But remember that the purpose is not to trick you, or make you feel stupid. The interviewers just want to see how you approach problems. So it’s important for you to start by clarifying the question, and then clearly explaining your solution.
In today’s dialog, we’ll hear a software developer named Kevin, who’s doing a technical interview for a new job. Kevin not only has to face questions about his experience, but he also has to explain a solution to a technical problem. He’s being interviewed by Mick. We’ll hear how Kevin navigates the interview.
Listening Questions
1. What kind of experience does Kevin demonstrate when he talks about an exciting project he worked on? 2. Besides having a happy client, why was the project so successful? 3. When Mick gives Kevin a technical problem, what is the first thing Kevin does?
In today’s 925 English video lesson, we’re going to learn how to use questions in English to ask for details.
It would be great if everyone always told us exactly what we need to know. But it doesn’t usually happen. When we want detailed information, we need to go out and get it. And that means asking people questions.
You can confirm information with simple yes / no questions, like “Do you sell printers?” or “Are you the manager?” But I want to start by looking at questions that get different kinds of information, not just a “yes” or “no” answer. And one of the best ways to get information is with WH questions. We have five WH words in English: who, what, where, when, and why. You might also use “how,” which has a “w” and an “h” but not in that order.
925 English is a course of business English video lessons for beginners (CEFR level A2) English learners. With 925 English lessons you can learn business English expressions to use in work and business.
Welcome back to Business English Pod for our final lesson on business English idioms related to food.
Over the past couple of weeks, we’ve looked at a lot of different English idioms connected to food. It should be no surprise that so many expressions are related to eating and drinking. After all, we do it three times a day, or more. Food is not just a necessity, it’s a big part of life and culture.
When you’re looking at idioms, it’s important to remember that they are fixed expressions where the words don’t have a literal meaning. So when you hear that someone is “in a pickle,” you have to understand that there’s no actual pickle. It just means that someone’s in a difficult situation. You have to figure it out from the context, because there’s not really an obvious connection between pickles and difficult situations.
In the lesson, we’ll rejoin a conversation between three colleagues. Jessie has been trying to convince Luke and Ben to join her in starting a business together. Today, we’ll hear them talking about the possible challenges of running their own business.
Listening Questions
1. What example does Ben give of a possibly difficult business situation? 2. What does Jessie say is one important benefit of running your own business? 3. According to Jessie, what is necessary for people to have a good business partnership?
