In all my workshops, I take a poll from students as to what according to them is the most challenging thing about interviews. Most of them tell me it is their weak communication skills for interviews. Because lack of good communication skills makes them nervous during an interview. As they are not able to express themselves properly.
So, I am going to share a clear strategy with you for improving specifically your communication skills for interviews. I have helped students and young professionals in improving their communication skills through interactive workshops.
How you should improve each aspect of listening, speaking, reading, and writing skills? Finally, how to put all of these skills together for your interviews
Reading Newspaper Articles
The first component you should tackle to improve your English should be reading to communicate effectively during interviews. So, you need a good vocabulary and a good command of English grammar. All these things can be improved by active reading.
Here, I would recommend that you should read the newspaper every day. If you’re more of a digital person and you like checking the news over the phone. Let me be very frank with you, reading in shorts is not going to help. Some better news platforms would be helpful to you, for example, which have detailed articles and that would help in improving your English.
Reading Books
Other than news articles you can also read books to build a stronghold on English. These books could be fiction books, non-fiction books, self-help books, or motivational books at the end of the day. What is important is that your English should improve no matter which book you read.
If you want a more dedicated vocabulary-building source, I would highly recommend the English Language apps.
They are generally used by students preparing for the GRE and planning to study abroad. But I feel it can be used by anybody who wants to add more words to the dictionary.
Listening YouTube Videos
Next comes listening, a great way to improve your English communication just by listening and watching other people speaking. One recommendation here would be to switch on subtitles whenever you’re watching English TV Shows or movies watching. These tv shows help you learn important parts of speech, voice modulation, Intonation Patterns, and the pace of speaking. Reading the subtitles improves your English grammar and vocabulary apart from this.
There are YouTube channels that I found to be pretty useful regarding communication skills for interviews.
These speakers have a really good command of English and they have some great tips for you to improve your English. So, if you’re curious and want to learn more you can check these channels out.
Listening to Podcasts to Improve Communication Skills for Interviews
Other than that, you can also listen to podcasts you can listen to them while you’re working, exercising, running, cooking, or doing anything else. For example, the BBC English podcast is much helpful to improve your communication skills for interviews.
Improve Writing Practice
The next important part of communication is writing because it creates a very strong impression about your skills. If your writing is poor in writing cold emails for messages, you might not even get a response from the recruiters. Or, if your writing is not up to the mark in your resume, you might not even get an interview. So, working on your writing skills is extremely critical.
For example, you read a book, and when you finish it, sit down to write a book summary and what you liked about it. In this way not only will you practice your writing skills but you will never forget what you read in that book. Later when you go for an interview, it can become a great talking point for you as well.
Coming to resumes, I have seen a lot of resumes in my career so far. And, what I’ve noticed is that most people find it challenging to write good sentences about what they have done or achieved in their careers.
Some things you can do to make your statements more impactful would be to include statistics in your writing. For example, instead of just saying = worked with the team to achieve a particular goal. You could say collaborated with a team of five members to achieve that particular goal or instead of just saying worked with the company to increase online sales of smartwatches. Alternatively, you could say = worked for the company to increase online sales of smartwatches by 15%. Including these statistics not only establishes credibility but makes your statements more powerful.
Another thing you should do is focus on the results from your work along with the actions. Most people when writing their resumes, just focus on what kind of work have they done in the company. But they don’t mention what contribution have they made to the company. Or, how do their actions help the company? So, including this result component is also equally essential.
Speaking Skills for Interviews
Finally, coming to Speaking Skills, I think this is the part that scares every learner the most. A lot of my students have told me in the past that when it comes to writing, they are still able to manage because they have enough time to craft their sentences properly.
But when it comes to impromptu speaking, that is where they get nervous. Here, I like to share my personal experience with you something that has helped me improve my speaking skills. And, come out of my introverted shell is when I started speaking to people who did not speak my native language Urdu.
During this, my English never improved, but speaking with my foreign friends who spoke the English language like native speakers.
The only tip, the only formula to improve English speaking is to start speaking in English whatever you think. It’s just like driving a car you cannot learn how to drive a car just by watching YouTube videos or learning the techniques. You have to get in the driver’s seat and get out on the road to learn to drive.
Similarly, you need to pluck up that courage get out there and start speaking and slowly you will see that your English will improve.
