Words To Drop From Your Job Interview To Make You Sound Smarter

Words To Drop From Your Job Interview To Make You Sound Smarter

300 million people across the world are now so used to using social media that they no longer seem to have the time or attention span to articulate in any great length. However, there is one crucial area of you life where you absolutely cannot afford to be frugal with your words. This is within yourjob interview. However, you need to choose your words wisely and drop those words that can make you look bad.

You need your job interviewer to understand you and to be able to explain why you are the perfect fit for the job on offer. You can only do this through having an engaging two-way conversation. The interview environment is your chance to get your message across succinctly. The last thing you want to do is to use words or language that ends up confusing your interviewer or makes you look inarticulate or unable to communicate well with others.

Lets take a look at some words that you may want to drop from your interview and why using them may not reflect well:

1. I Went

When asked in interview about your past education or work experience, try to refrain from saying ‘I went’ too often or at all if you can avoid it. ‘I went’ sounds like you are referring to the past in a way that is no longer of any importance to you, especially if you over-use it. Use ‘I attended’ instead. This is a much more positive and engaging way to describe your history, ‘I attended Wentworth Academy where I studied…..’ sound much better than ‘I studied science when I went to school’.

2. Honestly

In conversation people will use the word ‘honestly’ to add emphasis to their message. However, should you use this during your interview in an answer to a question, there is a chance that your interviewer will wonder if your other statements were not quite so honest. This could create an awkward atmosphere, especially if the interviewer is asking for the reasons why you left your last employment.

3. Really, Really

You have to appreciate that most interviewers or recruiters have to sit through a vast number of interviews, sometimes for hours on end every day! After a while their minds can become fatigued and little things can start to irritate them. Should your interview fall at the end of the day after a good few people have been seen ahead of you, it is pretty much guaranteed that your interviewer will be flagging in both mind and body. The last thing they want to hear is a job candidate repeating unnecessary words over and over again.

We all want to come across as enthusiastic and positive in our interview, but constantly repeating unnecessary words such as ‘really’ or even worse repeating them twice, ‘I really, really enjoyed my time at Smith and Smith accountants’ is going to grate on an interviewers nerves. So will overusing ‘really’ and ‘very’ too. ‘I was a really very good student’….. ‘I had a really very good time at…’ ‘I am a really very good reader’…. Aargh!

4. Literally

We all have a friend who over-uses the word ‘literally’. How annoying does it sound after a while? Now imagine how an interviewer is going to feel towards a candidate who literally uses the word ‘literally’ in literally every other sentence? Literally. How annoying is that!

5. Maybe

Using the word ‘maybe’ in your job interview can make you sound not only unsure of yourself, but also unsure about your interview. Why are you here having an interview at all if you were not certain that the job on offer was the right one for you. Saying that you ‘maybe’ could do the job isn’t going to win you the position.

6. Stuff

‘Stuff’ is a non-word. It doesn’t mean anything specific. It is a casual way to refer to activities you did or objects you own without any detail. Telling your interviewer that you attended a course and picked up a lot of stuff isn’t going to impress. You need to be able to deliver details that your interviewer wants to hear, not that you consider courses and training as ‘stuff’ that isn’t important enough to be explained in detail.

Conclusion

You need to keep your interviewer engaged if you are to stand any chance of landing a job. This is why there are some words that need to be dropped from your interview to enable you to come across as the super-smart cookie that you truly are.