How to Find the Right Interview Words

“I wish I had said it differently.” You only get one chance to find the right interview words.

Many candidates will come out of that interview room with a nagging feeling that they could have communicated their thoughts a little bit better. While there is no such thing as perfection in communication, there is something to be said for choosing your words as carefully as possible.

The impact of the right words will go a long way towards getting you that job.

In the white heat of the interview room, however, finding the right words isn’t always easy.

One of the most valuable activities that any candidate can undertake is to dedicate a decent amount of time to “self-talk” before an interview. This may sound a little strange, but when you have already had a conversation with yourself, it will be far easier to have with someone else. You don’t need to wander down the street muttering to yourself. Just running through potential conversations in your head will be enough.

When your neurons have fired a few times in a particular conversational direction, they will be much readier to do so again when the actual interview comes. If you mentally prepare yourself sufficiently, those pensive showers and long weekend walks will pay off.

You won’t need to find the right words. They will already be there, ready for action.

The right words

Let’s say that the interviewer asks you about your most challenging experience with an employee. You will have thought through the answer multiple times before. The biggest mistake someone can make is rushing into a garbled monologue. Interviewers want to get into your head, but they want to find their own way through rather than be overwhelmed by a tidal wave of information.

Pause to reflect before you answer. Give them enough to go on. Wait to let them choose where they would like the conversation to go next. Finding the right words is essential, but it can be entirely spoilt if you use fifty words where five would have sufficed.

When someone is confident and composed in their thoughts, it creates a potent impression. Self-awareness is something that every employer will be looking for. If you stumble over your words, you will give the impression that you are not sure about what you think. You might know your own mind, but communicating that to someone else without the right words is almost impossible.

To finish with, I would like to point out how a resume is written. Resume writing services are standard, but if the resume is written in a language register that is entirely different from how a candidate talks, that disconnect can be enough to make an interviewer wary. Finding the right words starts on your resume and hopefully continues into any interview.

Lastly, the most important thing to consider is listening to what the interviewer is asking. Giving a “perfect” answer to an entirely different question gives the impression that you are not listening. The “right” words also have to be “right in the context of what the interviewer wants to know. Not just what you want to tell them.

Composed communication will get you that job.

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This blog is shared with Job Seeker Duetists. 

Written by former recruitment ghostwriter Paul Drury (not AI).