How to prepare for a job interview in English

What are interviewers really checking in an English interview?

They are not grading your grammar. They are checking whether you can do the job and whether you can communicate well enough to do it with their team. In practice, that means three things: can people understand you, can you explain your work with structure, and do you stay clear under pressure.

Small grammar mistakes rarely cost an offer. What costs offers is a long answer with no point, a candidate who apologises for their English every few minutes, or a story that never reaches the result. All of these can be fixed with preparation.

What does a 7-day preparation plan look like?

1. Day 1: Read the job description twice. Write down the five skills it asks for most. Research the company, its product and recent news.
2. Day 2: Write five work stories, one per skill. Use situation, action, result. Put numbers in the result where you can.
3. Day 3: Practise “Tell me about yourself” and “Why do you want to work here?” out loud with a timer. Record both.
4. Day 4: Practise the behavioural questions using your five stories. Say each story in under two minutes.
5. Day 5: Practise the difficult questions: weakness, leaving your job, career gap, salary. Keep each answer short.
6. Day 6: Do a full mock interview of 30 to 45 minutes, on video if the real one is on video. Review the recording.
7. Day 7: Light review only. Prepare your questions for the end, check your setup, and sleep.

If you have less time, do days 2, 3 and 6. Stories, the opening answer and one full mock cover most of the value.

Which 10 questions should you rehearse?

Most interviews are built from the same small set of questions. Rehearse these until the structure is automatic. Each one has its own guide on this site.

1. “Tell me about yourself.” See our guide on how to answer tell me about yourself in English.
2. “Why do you want to work here?” See the guide on why do you want to work here.
3. “Why should we hire you?” See the guide on why should we hire you.
4. “What is your greatest weakness?” See the guide on your greatest weakness.
5. “Tell me about a time when…” See the guide on behavioural interview questions.
6. “Why are you leaving your job?” See the guide on why you are leaving your job.
7. “Where do you see yourself in five years?” See the five-year guide.
8. “What are your salary expectations?” See the guide on salary expectations.
9. “Can you explain this gap in your CV?” See the guide on explaining a career gap.
10. “Do you have any questions for us?” See the guide on questions to ask at the end of an interview.

What does a weak answer sound like next to a strong one?

What does a strong first answer sound like?

Your first answer sets the tone. Here are two models for “Tell me about yourself”.

Software engineer: “I’m a backend engineer with six years of experience, mostly in payments. At my current company I led the move from a monolith to services, which cut deployment time from days to hours. I enjoy the part of engineering where you design for scale, and that’s why this role interested me.”

Sales manager: “I’ve worked in B2B software sales for eight years, the last three managing a team of five. Last year my team beat its target by 20 percent, mainly by changing how we qualified leads. I’m looking for a role with a larger market, and your expansion plans are the kind of challenge I want.”

What changes when the interview is on a video call?

• Audio first. Use a headset or earphones with a microphone. Poor audio makes any accent harder to understand.
• Test the platform the day before: camera, microphone, screen sharing and your name on screen.
• Look at the camera when you speak, and at the screen when you listen.
• Keep notes on paper beside the screen, not in a window you have to switch to.
• Leave a short pause before you answer. Video adds delay, and talking over the interviewer is common.
• If the connection drops, say: “Sorry, you froze for a moment. Could you repeat the last part?”

Will my accent be a problem, and how do I make sure I’m understood?

Having an accent is normal in international teams. Being hard to understand is the real risk, and it usually comes from speed, not accent. Most non-native speakers speak faster when nervous, drop word endings and run sentences together.

• Slow down by about a fifth. It will feel too slow to you and sound normal to them.
• Pause between ideas, especially before numbers and results.
• Stress the key word: “We cut costs by forty percent.”
• Use short sentences. Long sentences invite grammar mistakes and lose the listener.
• Do not translate idioms from your first language. Plain English is clearer.
• Avoid filler: “basically”, “like”, “you know”. Silence is better than filler.

How do you manage nerves when speaking English under pressure?

Nerves reduce your English level for a few minutes. The fix is to have the first two minutes automatic. Rehearse your greeting, your opening answer and one buying-time phrase until you could say them tired.

• Have three phrases ready for when you need time: “That’s a good question, let me think for a second.” See our guide on phrases to buy time in an English interview.
• If you lose a word, describe it: “the tool we used to track tickets”. Nobody expects a perfect vocabulary.
• Do not apologise for your English. If you make a mistake, correct it once and continue.
• Breathe out before the first answer. A slow exhale lowers your speaking speed.

Rehearse with a timer, record yourself, and use the one-breath test: the first sentence of every answer should fit in one breath. For a full mock with a counterpart, you can set up a custom roleplay in Eloquent with the role, the company and the interviewer, and answer out loud. The debrief quotes your exact words and suggests a better line.

Frequently asked questions