Englishpod 65 Job Interview III
1. Dialogue
A: Very good. Now, I have a couple of final questions.
B: I hope they are not too hard.
A: Oh, well, why should we hire you?
B: Oh, I think I would be a perfect fit in this company. I have a unique combination of strong technical acumen and outstanding soft skills. You know, I excel at building strong long-term comsumer relationships. For example, when I headed the customer support department in my previous company, our team solved about 70% of our customer problems. I decided that we need a better information and technical preparation on our products. So, after I implemented a series of training sessions in coordination with our technical department, we were able to solve 90% of customers' issues. Give me a opportunity, I can bring this kind of success to this company.
A: Woo, impressive. So, what would you consider to be your greatest weakness?
B: To be honest, I struggle with organization and time management. Puctuality has never been a strength of mine. I find it hard to organize my time effectively. And actually, I‘ve addressed this weakness recently. By attending a workshop on efficient time management, it helped me a lot by providing me with great insigths on how to get organized and use my time efficiently, so I think I am getting better now.
A: Great. Well, let me tell you that I am very pleased with this interview. We are shortlisting our candidates this week, and next week, we will inform our shortlisted candidates of the day and time for a second interview with our CEO.
B: Great, thanks a lot. I hope to hear from you. Good bye.
2. Vocabulary and phrases
technical acumen,~a strong inside understanding of technical issues
excel, ~do well in
head, ~be a leader of something
struggle, ~hard to do something
puctuality, ~being puctual, always being on time
address, ~solve, deal with
close off, ~end
truthful, ~trustable, believable
perfect fit, ~a good person for a job
training session, ~a meeting or seminar to teach people to know about technique or skills
short list, ~fewer candidates list
prospect, ~expectation, hope
CV, ~a short document about one's education or work experience
shorcoming, ~weakness
asset, ~valueable or beneficial things
3. Rewrite
Continue the previous story about job interview. This episode mainly told the last section of interview, mostly about hard questions. This time was no exception. The first question was why the company should hire a person. This question tested how much the interviewee knew the company's demand and his or her strengths. In the story, the interviewee succeeded to answer this question. He stated he was the perfect fit, because his great strength was to combine technical aumen with outstanding soft skills. He exceled at building long-term customer relationships. He also took an example. When he headed the customer support deparment, he found their deparment could only solve 70% problems. After he implemented a series training sessions in coordination with technical teams, all the subordinates knew better on the products and enhanced the problem solving ratio to 90%. The second difficult quetion followed. The interviewer asked what was his hreateast weakness. The interviewee replied he always struggled with organization and time management. But at that time, he had gotten better by attending workshop. The workshop provided him with great insights on how to organize efficiently and helped address his weakness. He smartly closed off the question quickly. Finally, the interview told him they would short list the candinates at that week and would inform him of the day and time for a second interview with CEO if he was on the shortlist.
