How to prepare for your international job interview

People outside of the U.S. and Europe are very curious about getting international jobs, more specifically jobs with U.S. or European countries where salaries are much higher. Let's talk about strategies that will help you in this process.

Pre interview

First of all, start now! Everyone feels the same, unprepared. But if you are waiting to feel 100% confident with your English you'll be waiting another 10 years.

Before starting the process of looking you should ensure that all your information has been translated well into English, specifically your resume, LinkedIn account and your portfolio. Google translator is not perfect. I would suggest working with a native English speaker on this.

Remember that during these interviews, they know that your spoken English won't be perfect. The interviewer isn't going to disqualify you because you used an incorrect preposition or verb tense. They aren't hiring English teachers. The best thing you can do is to go to the interview knowing ahead of time that YOU WILL MAKE MISTAKES. The more you worry about it the more mistakes you will make.

It's much more important to focus on your listening skills which leads me to the next suggestion. Watch interview videos on YouTube. Don Georgevich has an excellent channel for that. His channel is for general interview preparation. You should also look for more specific videos, for example if you are a product manager look for product manager interview preparation videos.

During the interview

Remember that it's very normal to be nervous especially in another language! Accept it. Speak just a little slower than you normally do. When we are nervous we start to speak faster and you definitely don't want to do that. Remember also, to smile and for the first question to include in your response a thank you for the interviewer for their time.

Do not and I repeat do not ever apologize for your English. You are there to demonstrate confidence and the fact that you are interviewing in English is something you should be extremely proud of. You make mistakes and so does everyone else. There's no reason to apologize.

If a couple of the questions are challenging repeat the question back to the interviewer to give you more time to think. For example if they ask you what your biggest weakness is, your response could be: "mmmm, what is my biggest weakness?", then proceed to respond. You gave yourself a little extra time to process the question.

After the interview

Immediately write down what you did well and more importantly what you did badly in a notebook. Use that notebook for all future interviews to study from.

Also, send an email thanking the company and interviewer for their time. If you really do want the job, but haven't heard from the company after a week, email or even call them. Human Resources people aren't perfect and sometimes forget things. Maybe they do really want you.