Living In The Fast Lane

I received lots of email from Indonesian fellows who ask for advice to get a job outside the country. Well, first of all, the company where you want to work for should know that you exist. I won’t discuss how to get there. I just want to share some tips how to face job interview, the next step in getting the job, in english.

You want to work abroad, don’t you? So expect to get the job interview in english. Unless the company insists to use some other language, english is the most common language that is used during the interview.

There is nothing to worry about when you have job interview in english, either in face-to-face meeting or over the phone. The secret is: you have to practice how to answer the questions.
As you may have already noticed, most job interviews share common questions like:
- describe yourself
- why you want to quit from current job
- what are you looking for in the new job
- your strongest and weakest points, etc

Write down the list of questions that may come up during the interview and practice to answer them in english. I used to practice while driving. It will make you look silly by talking to yourself, but it’s worth to try. You will get used to answer the question and when the real interview comes you should be able to handle it without any problem.

I have been in so many job interview, with native and non-native speakers, and believe me answering technical questions is much easier than the questions listed above. Maybe because we have already got used to read books and reference written in english so we can qoute from there in our answers.

So keep practicing.
You never know, you may get unexpected phone interview anytime.