Job Interview Guide and Practice for ESL Students

Job Interview Guide and Practice for ESL Students In this extended job interviewing listening selection, youll hear the first few moments of a job interview. Before you listen, there are a few things you should note about standard job interview behavior, speaking forms used, and more. Breaking the Ice Youll notice a few questions in the beginning of the interview that concerns how the job applicant arrived and the weather. This is commonly referred to as breaking the ice. Breaking the ice is an important way to begin the job interview, but it shouldnt take too long. Generally, job interviewers will break the ice to help you feel comfortable. Make sure to give positive, but not too detailed answers to these ice breakers. Give short, positive answers to questions.Dont go into too much detail.Expect questions about the weather or how you arrived at the job interview.Its a good idea to make a pleasant comment yourself to break the ice. Keep it short, positive and simple. Referrals Sometimes, you may have found about a job opportunity through a referral. If this is the case, make sure to use the referral to your best advantage by mentioning it at the beginning of the interview. Mention the name of the referral at the beginning of the interview. Ideally, this should be done when asked about how you found the job opening.Provide the name of the referral, but dont go into too much detail about the relationship, unless asked.Give the name of the referral only once. Dont continue to repeat the name during the interview.Dont assume the job interviewer knows the person you are mentioning. Language Relating your job experience and how it relates to the specific job for which you are applying are the two most important tasks during any job interview. Make sure to use lots of descriptive verbs and adjectives to describe your responsibilities. For example, instead of the following job description: I talked to customers about their problems. A more descriptive phrase with better vocabulary might be: I counseled customers documenting their concerns, and coordinating our response to their individual needs. In the listening selection, you will hear the present perfect, present perfect continuous and present simple used because the person is speaking about his current projects. Take some time to prepare descriptive sentences concerning your responsibilities.Use a dictionary, or this handy job interview vocabulary page to improve your vocabulary selection.Make sure to connect your past experience to the position by using lots of present perfect.Quickly review appropriate job interviewing tenses for describing experiences. Now that youve reviewed some basic interviewing technique, open this link in a new window and listen a few times to the job interview listening selection. If you have difficulties understanding, go to the next page to see a transcription of the job interview. Interviewer (Ms Hanford): (opens door, shakes hands) Good morning†¦Job Applicant (Mr. Anderson): Good morning, Joe Anderson, its a pleasure to meet you Ms Hanford. Hanford: How do you do? Please take a seat. (Joe sits) Its quite the rainy day outside, isnt it?Anderson: Yes, luckily, you have a nice underground parking lot that helped me avoid the worst of it. I must say this is an impressive building. Hanford: Thank you, we like working here... Now, lets see. Youve come to interview for the position of e-commerce manager, havent you?Anderson: Yes, Peter Smith encouraged me to apply, and I think Id be ideal for the position. Hanford: Oh. Peter†¦ hes a great sysadmin, we like him a lot †¦ Lets go over your resume. Could you begin by telling me about your qualifications?Anderson: Certainly. Ive been working as the regional assistant director of marketing at Simpco Northwest for the past year. Hanford: And what did you do before that?Anderson: Before that, I was a Simpco local branch manager in Tacoma. Hanford: Well, I see you have done well at Simpco. Can you give me some more detail about your responsibilities as assistant director?Anderson: Yes, Ive been in charge of in-house personnel training for our Internet customer service reps over the past six months. Hanford: Can you tell me a little bit about what youve been doing in your training?Anderson: Weve been working on improving customer satisfaction through an innovative e-commerce solution which provides real-time chat service help to visitors to the site. Hanford: Interesting. Is there anything in particular you feel would be useful here at Sanders Co.?Anderson: I understand that you have been expanding your e-commerce to include social networking features. Hanford: Yes, thats correct.Anderson: I think that my experience in customer relations via the Internet in real-time puts me in the unique position of understanding what works and what doesnt. Hanford: Yes, that does sound useful. What difficulties and challenges do you think we might run into?Anderson: Well, I think well continue to see consumers spend more of the shopping dollars online. Ive been studying how sales directly relates to customer satisfaction with online services. Hanford: Would you mind giving me a bit more detail on that?Anderson: Sure ... if customers arent satisfied with the service they receive online, they wont come back. Its much easier to lose customers online. Thats why you need to make sure that you get it right the first time round. Hanford: I can see youve learnt quite a lot in the short time youve been working in e-commerce.Anderson: Yes, its an exciting field to be working in †¦

Outline Note Taking. Make Studying Easier

Outline Note Taking. Make Studying Easier It’s easy to reach information-overload at college, especially when the professor talks too fast, or when you are doing final preparations for an exam. To make things tougher your brain needs time to file the information for remembering later. This all adds up to the need to organize the data right from the beginning. Outline note taking is one way to achieve this. Look Through a Practical Example Let’s assume you would like to summarize â€Å"outline note taking† as a possible examination question, in which case you might set it out in layers like this. Notice the main thoughts are down the left hand margin, with the lowest levels at the far right. Let’s use the same outline for the rest of this blog to help you get a feel and cement your understanding. Introduction to Outline Note Taking Outline note taking is a study method that uses an outline to logically structure a block of information, and make the details easier to retrieve from memory later. The data could come from a lecture, a tutorial, a textbook, or your own ideas as you get to grip with a topic. Making summary notes is as old as written history, for example the hieroglyphics on Inca and Egyptian pyramid walls. The ancients did not have space to write everything down so they created symbols for the key concepts. Outline note taking at college has a related purpose. There is so much information coming out of class you don’t have time to write it down. If you did, how would you find it in a box full of notebooks and scraps of paper? It makes so much more sense to jot down the teacher’s thoughts in a logical set of headings. That way, you can concentrate on what they are saying. Outline note taking is also a great way to summarize a chapter in a textbook so you get to see the bigger picture, and understand the overall message. How This Method Works Use a pencil and have an eraser handy because you are going to make changes throughout the process. You need to separate the main topic from the lower order ones. This is not always as easy as it seems. For example, the lecturer’s thinking may not be logical from your perspective, or the textbook chapter not directly related to your major. Most students put the key thoughts on the left and the minor ones to the right. This is entirely a matter of choice and you can do this the other way around or from top to bottom if you like. Whichever way you go it is important to use a separator between the words and phrases, so you know where one ends and the next one begins. I used a grid. Bullets, numbers, highlighter colors are equally good. Practical Application of Outline Note Taking Capturing key thoughts in the appropriate boxes is the secret to outline note taking that works. For example, if your teacher says, â€Å"Today we are going to discuss the political implications of the Civil War† you could outline it this way: There are no model answers. What works for you is right. As long as you are flexible, are not hogtied to an early idea and keep that eraser handy, you will do fine and get your mind around outline note taking soon. The words in the titles are incredibly important because they trigger your memory later of the details you are summarizing. If you are a history student, then ‘U.S. Civil War’ could be advisable. Which do you think is best: consequences, penalties or implications? This is not just semantics. Outline note taking is about words and their meanings. You may find it helpful to use ‘cue words’ as further memory triggers where the outline titles are broad. Here’s a worked example to illustrate what we mean. Again, these are just loose thoughts. Do you remember the definition earlier? Outline note taking is a study method that uses an outline to logically structure a block of information, and make the details easier to remember later. So next time you do your homework, try taking notes the outline way. See for yourself how useful that will be.