You've got an interview in English for a senior role.
How do you prepare?
You're probably feeling a little bit nervous, which is of course completely understandable.
Let me give you some tips to help you feel more confident on the day.
Let's crack on.
Hello, and welcome back to Confident Business English.
My name is Anna.
I'm a neuro language coach and this is the podcast.
If you are a senior manager working in a large multinational organization and you want to build your confidence communicating in English,
So a job change is one of these really strategic moments in your career.
I wanted to talk about this today because I was inspired by a few of my clients that this year have gone through the interview process.
Perhaps it's because you're planning to move up and have a more global role, more responsibility.
You might be in a difficult situation that you're looking to get out of.
You're looking for a new challenge, perhaps.
Or maybe, like one of my clients, you're actually moving to a new country.
Maybe that's Canada or the US or maybe the UK.
Or you're just moving into a role where you're going to have to speak 100% of the time in English.
Whatever it is, this is a really key moment for you.
And you want to do yourself justice in the interview.
This is not about being perfect.
You realize that it might not be the perfect answer.
You're going to be a little bit nervous as it is, but you really want to give a good impression and hopefully get across your skills and experience so that you have the best shot at getting that role.
How do you do that?
Well, we want to make sure that the answers that you're giving are really getting across the experience that you have.
And this is one of the problem points that I see with a lot of people when I'm practicing interviews is that they're not selling themselves enough and they're not using accurate vocabulary to describe what they're actually doing at a leadership level.
So stick around for the next few minutes and I'm going to show you some simple ways that you can elevate your vocabulary to match your senior leadership experience.
Just before we dive in.
I'm not going to be covering mindset because there's a fantastic episode with an interview specialist 172.
You can go back and listen to that.
And also episode number 226 is with Claire Whitmill, who gives you some really good tips about structuring your answers.
But in this episode, we're going to focus on vocabulary for senior managers like you.
So let's start looking now. at this senior manager leader vocabulary.
We're moving into the world of a very specific set of action verbs that are perfect to describe the breadth of your experience.
Let's start with the first one, classic, to oversee.
I oversaw the implementation of the new financial system.
If we compare that with something like I managed Yeah, it's absolutely great, but oversee gives that more senior touch.
You're supervising the overall process.
That's that key, oversee.
You're looking over all parts of it, and that's a really nice verb to use in a leadership context.
You can oversee the implementation.
You can oversee a transformation.
You can oversee a change.
You can oversee a wider team.
Next. head up.
I headed up the strategic review of our global partnerships.
This is a really nice alternative to lead.
I'm sure you're already familiar with that one.
It's a lovely verb for leadership, but here's a fresh one, different.
I headed up the strategic review of our global partnerships.
That means you were In charge of something, you were leading something.
So wonderful verb to use there for senior managers like you.
Let's think about leadership now then, in the sense of enhancing collaboration across an organization.
You may have a role, but that's a big part of what you do.
And in the interview, you'll want to reflect that result, that success.
And we're going to use a phrasal verb here, which is to bring success. together.
Imagine they ask you, okay, essentially give us an example of a successful project you've worked on.
And you could say one of my biggest achievements was to bring together cross-functional teams to improve collaboration.
If, instead of saying that, you said I collaborated with different teams, or Well, I would argue that you're underselling it there a little bit because yes, you did collaborate, but the value that you brought was bringing people together.
And to bring together gets across a different type of experience and direction than just collaborate.
Do you see what I mean?
Then moving into a lovely group of verbs here which I don't hear people use enough around collaboration.
Change, because probably part of your role is, of course, about making the business better and moving it forward.
Now, of course, you could say, I led the change.
I changed this.
I changed that.
But OK, they've probably heard that a million times.
What are some different things that we could throw in there?
Here's one.
Steer.
I steered the organization toward more sustainable practices.
Steer, S-T-E-E-R.
That's a tricky one.
Doesn't really sound like it's spelt.
Steer comes from steering wheel that you have on a car.
So it's about driving something in a certain way.
And you'll hear as well that I said to steer toward.
I steered the organization toward more sustainable practices, or maybe more economically efficient practices rather, And what you're really getting across there is you were in the driving seat, which gets across that leadership element.
Another beautiful verb you can use is just to drive.
I drove a major shift towards data-driven decision-making, for example.
That has a different feeling than I managed a major shift.
I drove it.
I was the driving force behind it.
Again, it gets across more of that leadership vibe, which is what we're going for here.
The next one on my list and I love this one.
People don't use this verb.
Enough is to shape something.
Imagine again, they're asking you to talk about what was your impact?
What did you do in the company?
I shaped the long-term vision for our global business. operations.
I shaped them.
I formed them.
I influenced them.
I had an impact on them.
But to shape is a beautiful verb that you can use there to say that.
It doesn't necessarily have to be to shape the long-term vision.
It could be I shaped the direction of the department.
I shaped the direction of, you can see me going back to that sentence.
It's quite a natural fit there, but that is a beautiful verb to talk about having an impact and influencing things.
Let's have a look at two more on the list and the first one is to do with culture actually.
You may, before applying for this new job, have spent some time in that organization, or even if your tenure was a little bit shorter, you probably have a certain way of doing things and you like to bring a certain culture to the team.
So what culture do you champion?
Here.
If you want to get across to them a little bit more about your philosophy, it could be.
I champion or I championed, of course a culture of continuous improvement.
Or it could be.
I really tried to champion a culture of continuous improvement and learning from our mistakes.
To champion really fits with what you're trying to do here, which is get across that leadership experience.
Last one, and perhaps the most tricky one, I would say grammatically, but great for talking about the results and impact that you've had is to bring about.
So let's imagine that you're a finance executive and as part of your role, you have introduced big operational efficiencies and When they ask you to talk about that, you could say one of the things I'm most proud of was bringing about a measurable increase in operational efficiencies.
To bring about is to cause something to happen.
So you were the driving force behind that.
Yes, of course.
And it goes without saying that you have a team behind you and it's important to recognize that.
But as the leader of that team, you and your team you could refer to it like that, of course, if you prefer to brought about a huge change in the organization.
Now, that could be operational efficiencies.
It could be, for example, we brought about a huge increase in customer satisfaction.
It would generally follow a noun phrase like that.
So to wrap up for today then, those are some of my absolute favorites action verbs that you can use when you go to an interview to really get across your leadership and senior manager experience accurately.
So here's a task for you to put this into action then.
If you're going through this type of process at the moment, take some time to think about the verbs that I've talked about today.
How could you incorporate that to talk about your experience?
Just by taking a little bit of time to think about how you could incorporate some of this vocabulary into your answers I hope will help you feel more confident going into that interview, going into that Zoom call perhaps, or maybe even going into that interview panel face to face, which can be extremely intimidating, to feel like you are actually accurately saying what you've done.
And at least, regardless of whether you get the job or not, you'll feel confident that Okay, I did my best and I said what I had to say and I gave an accurate reflection of my experience.
Let me just run through my top picks then.
And don't forget, I'll be putting them in the newsletter with a few extra tips.
So don't forget to sign up if you want that.
I oversaw.
I headed up.
I brought together.
I brought about a huge change.
I steered the organization toward change.
I shaped the long-term vision for the organization.
I championed a culture of continuous improvement.
And I drove a major shift towards data-driven decision-making.
As I said before, you've got those other episodes, 226 and 172, to go back to as well.
If you are interested in a little bit of a boost about interviews too,
Thank you so much, as always, for tuning in.
It was great to be with you.
And I will see you same time, same place next week.
Bye-bye.