Your resume says you speak Spanish. Are you ready to speak Spanish in a job interview?

The key takeaways from this before and after video are:

Practice & prepare. Be ready to speak your best Spanish. Record yourself using your phone’s voice memo app or video feature.  Note the errors you made (or ask someone else to do so on your behalf). Correct your errors and practice again. Repeat until you have internalized a pitch that you can deliver with ease.

Talk about your professional life. This gets to the content of your answer. Talk about how you have used your language skills in a professional context–any non-academic environment will do; you don’t have to be the professional to talk about your experiences in a business, school, public place, etc. Then explicitly tie your language skills to the job you are interviewing for: say how you might use Spanish to meet needs and solve problems for the organization.

Don’t talk about your studies or why you like Spanish personally! This tip sounds straightforward, but it’s difficult to follow. Your first instinct will be to talk about yourself, your language studies, why you like the language, how you’ve learned it.  And this is precisely why it’s essential to practice & prepare–so you have something that diverts you away from that first spontaneous impulse that won’t resonate with employers.

Darcy Lear is a career coach specializing in academic writing, job search documents, professional school applications, and interview preparation. To schedule a campus workshop or for help navigating your career transition, contact Darcy: darcylear@gmail.com