What Interview English Materials Teach and What They Leave Out: Thirteen Sentences for Openings, Three Parts of STAR, Questions to Ask, and Following Up

🌏 中文版

My two earlier interview posts (general patterns and my own stories) both started from the Chinese, and I then checked a dictionary for the pattern. For the situations themselves, the only thing I had read was one commercial job-search site. This time I changed the method: I read interview teaching materials and guidance first to see what they cover, then compared that with what I was missing.

What I was trying to say

I read the body text of eleven sources this time. They fall into a few groups:

• Language teaching materials: three episodes of BBC Job Applications, two episodes of BBC Office English, one British Council article and four episodes of You're Hired, and the interview episode of Business English from Australia's ABC
• Government careers guidance: the common questions page and the STAR page from the UK's National Careers Service
• Universities: the STAR page from MIT's career advising office
• Official employer guidance: Amazon's interview process and Leadership Principles, and Google's interview preparation page
• Community resources for software interviews: four pages of the Tech Interview Handbook
• Management publications: one HBR article on questions to ask an interviewer. The original is behind a paywall, and what I read is a reposted copy on an association's website

Comparing the functions these sources cover with my original twenty-four interview cards, I found three things.

First, there were many functions I had not practiced at all. Small talk, why I am leaving, why I want this job, strengths, weaknesses, the Task part of STAR, asking for the question to be repeated, asking about the next step, saying thank you, following up after the interview: I had no card for any of them.

Second, nobody demonstrates how to talk about failure. Six sources list a question like "tell me about a time you failed", but none of them shows how to answer it in an interview. I had four cards about failure, all written by me from dictionary patterns. The materials are no help here.

Third, demonstrations with engineering content come from almost a single place. The sample answers in the language teaching materials are all set in marketing, sales, or administration. Only the Tech Interview Handbook has engineering content.

The function covered by the most sources is asking the interviewer questions, with eight sources. Next is "why do you want to work for this company", with seven.

What you can say in this situation

Each sentence is marked as quoted from a source or as a source sentence with my own content swapped in. The content I swapped in uses only facts already written in the two earlier posts.

1. Opening and describing my current job

The opening line comes from the Australian ABC interview episode. In the British Council's You're Hired Episode 5, there are two interviewers, and the candidate says Hello, it's very nice to meet you both.

The BBC episode Describing your job separates two versions: to a friend you can say I mostly work on…, and in a formal setting you say I'm responsible for…. The same episode teaches I have a background in …, which in practice means …, for giving the field first and then what you actually do.

I chose improving on purpose. My job is to optimize a product that already existed, and saying building would inflate my role.

For the reason for changing jobs, the same BBC episode has I'd like to apply my skills to a new challenge. The candidate in You're Hired says I've come as far as I can in my current position… and would love to take on some more responsibility.

2. Three parts of STAR

STAR is Situation, Task, Action, Result. The UK's National Careers Service has three complete sample answers labelled part by part, the clearest model I read this time.

The three sources open the Situation sentence in very similar ways: the National Careers Service uses in my previous … job, the British Council interview article uses In my last role, and the BBC episode Selling yourself uses when I started in my current role.

For the Result sentence, the sample answers in the materials all carry a concrete outcome or a number. The BBC version is through my actions we saw a ten percent increase in productivity.

I did not make a card for the Action part, because its content differs for every story. The sources demonstrate it with I organised a meeting with…, I sat down with them and we talked about…, and I spoke to … to ask him why…. The MIT STAR page and Indeed's STAR guide, which I read earlier, both say to use I rather than we, so the interviewer can see what you did yourself.

For the project you are proudest of, the line in You're Hired is the thing I'm most proud of professionally, and the BBC has I'm really proud of my record on…. I made one card from this: The thing I'm most proud of professionally is the memory work for our agent.

3. When I did not catch the question

This comes from the BBC episode Interviews part 1, where a BBC recruiter being interviewed says: don't be afraid to say 'sorry, can you repeat the question'. The other sources only give advice, not a sentence, so this card has this one source only.

4. Questions for the interviewer

The first three come from the Tech Interview Handbook, and the fourth from the British Council interview article.

This group repeats across sources more than any other:

• Asking about challenges: the Tech Interview Handbook, the British Council (What do you think the challenges will be for this role?), and the reposted HBR page (What are the biggest challenges that I might face in this position?)
• Asking about a typical day: the Tech Interview Handbook, the National Careers Service (what does a typical day involve?), and the reposted HBR page
• Asking about the next step: the British Council and the reposted HBR page (What are the next steps in the hiring process?)

The reposted HBR page also has Can you tell me about the team I'll be working with? and What's the most important thing I should accomplish in the first 90 days?. I already put the first of these among a card's alternative versions in my previous batch, where its source was a different commercial site. It now has one more source.

5. Following up after the interview

This comes from the BBC episode After the interview. The recruiter being interviewed is describing aloud the gist of an email, not giving an email template, so if you write one you still need to add a greeting and a closing. The same episode also says you can ask for feedback: please can I have some feedback on the interview.

What interviewers ask

I collected fifty-three questions this time and noted the source of each. These are the types that appear in two or more sources:

• Introducing yourself: Tell me about yourself
• Motivation: Why do you want to work for X company?, Why do you want to leave your current/last company?
• Projects: What is a project that you are most proud of?, What is the most challenging aspect of your current project?
• Failure: Tell me about a time you failed.
• Conflict: Tell me about a time when you had a conflict with a co-worker., Tell me about a time you had a disagreement with your manager.
• Fit: Tell me why you will be a good fit for the position.

The wording above comes from MIT's STAR page and the Tech Interview Handbook's question bank. The full list is in my research notes, and I did not put all of it in this post.

Can I also say it this way?

Say it again with different content

Read the Chinese, say it yourself, then check the reference. The content comes from my own work.

1. 在我現在的工作裡，團隊需要可以信任的監控數字。
   • In my current job, the team needed monitoring numbers it could trust.
2. 我的任務是找出讓追蹤資料可靠的方法。
   • My job was to find a way of making the trace data reliable.
3. 因為這樣，檔案解析改到背景執行。
   • Because of this, file parsing moved to background workers.
4. 我最自豪的是我們 agent 的記憶功能。
   • I'm really proud of the memory work for our agent.
5. 你覺得這個職位的挑戰會是什麼？
   • What do you think the challenges will be for this role?
6. 可以請您給我一些面試的回饋嗎？
   • Please can I have some feedback on the interview?

Sentences 5 and 6 are quoted from the sources. The rest are source sentences with the content swapped.

A short dialogue

This is a practice example I wrote. It is not a real interview, and not a dialogue from the materials.

A: Thanks for coming in today.

B: I'm really excited to be speaking with you today. Thank you so much for the opportunity.

A: Tell me about a project you're proud of.

B: In my current job, the team wanted the agent to remember users across conversations. My job was to find a way of doing that safely.

A: And what was the result?

B: Because of this, users can now see and delete what the agent remembers.

A: Do you have any questions for us?

B: Yes. What are the engineering challenges that the team is facing?

Without looking at the English, how would you say it?

Rate yourself on whether you got the meaning across, not on matching the words exactly.

Still to verify

• How to talk about failure in an interview: six sources ask the question, and none demonstrates an answer.
• Why I want to work for this company, strengths, weaknesses: the sources have questions and advice but very few sample sentences, so I made no cards for them this time.
• The exact wording of the HBR original: the article is behind a paywall, and I read the reposted page. The reposted page and the video of the same title have the same questions, but individual words differ.
• British and American differences in these phrases: no source addresses them.
• My actual years of experience: one interview card in an earlier post said "five years", which was an example value. I am not sure what number to give, so that card no longer states a number. The other example-value cards now use real content.

Overall

Eight of the thirteen sentences are quoted from the sources, one of them by picking team from company/team in the original. The ones worth practicing first are the three STAR openers and the four questions for the interviewer, because every interview uses them and both groups repeat across several sources.

The most useful finding this time is not a sentence but the shape of the gap. The materials teach openings, motivation, and questions for the interviewer thoroughly, yet nobody demonstrates how to talk about failure or about the details of an engineering project. Those two are exactly what my interviews need most, so I still have to write them myself and find someone to look them over. As for the sources, the language teaching materials all come from British and Australian institutions, with no American speaking materials. There was no native-speaker testing and no frequency comparison.

References

• ABC Education: Business English Ep4: Interviews: the opening, and tenses for describing what you have been doing
• BBC Office English: Describing your job: I'm responsible for, I mostly work on, a new challenge
• BBC Office English: Selling yourself: talking about achievements and results
• BBC Job Applications: Interviews part 1: asking for the question to be repeated
• BBC Job Applications: After the interview: following up and asking for feedback
• British Council: How to prepare for a job interview in English: the Result sentence, asking about challenges and the next step
• British Council: You're Hired Episode 05: transcript of an interview dialogue
• National Careers Service: The STAR method: the definition of STAR and three sample answers
• MIT CAPD: Using the STAR method: wording of behavioral questions, using I rather than we
• Indeed: How To Use the STAR Interview Response Technique: what each STAR part should contain (not one of the eleven sources this time; I read it earlier)
• Tech Interview Handbook: Final questions: questions to ask the interviewer
• Tech Interview Handbook: Behavioral interview questions: behavioral questions for software engineers
• 38 Smart Questions to Ask in a Job Interview (reposted copy): the question list from the HBR article