At a job interview

Finally, the moment has arrived! You’ve browsed ( = przejrzałeś) thousands of job ads ( = ogłoszenia o pracę), sent millions of cvs and covering letters ( = listy motywacyjne), attended hundreds of job interviews in Polish, been shortlisted ( = trafiłeś na krótką listę kandydatów) and even shorter-listed (ok, this word doesn’t exist in English, I’ve just made it up. I couldn’t resist the temptation!)… and yes! The moment has come, the final stage of reaching for ( = sięganie po) the job of your dreams in that international corporation or foreign company: the interview in English.

How do you feel?

I’m sure you can feel a thrill of excitement. Now, the word “thrill” is often misunderstood by Polish speakers, because lots of us confuse ( = mylimy) the two film genres ( = gatunki filmowe; yup! tricky pronunciation!): thrillers and horror movies. While horror movies are the scary stuff, thrillers are not. Thrillers are exciting. True enough, these are usually stories about crimes and stuff, but more exciting than frightening. Because a thrill ( = dreszczyk emocji) is a sudden feeling of being excited and pleased.   

So, you feel a thrill of excitement and the adrenaline rush ( = przypływ adrenaliny). But the side effects ( = efekty uboczne) are not so pleasant. Some of us might start shivering ( = trząść się ze strachu), some might have sweaty palms ( = spocone dłone; be careful of the pronunciation of palms – dłonie – we don’t read the letter “l”! And in “sweaty”, it’s “e”, not “i”  – nothing to do with sweets!). 

Some of you might have butterflies in your stomach. Now, this is also a tricky idiom for Polish learners. In Polish, “motyle w brzuchu” is a positive feeling – we get that when we are in love, for example. In English this means feeling very nervous about something that you have to do, especially something very important. So this can be positive, but is more often used in negative contexts. In Polish: mieć tremę, denerwować się.

A job interview in English is a stressful situation (no, “stressing” is not a good English word here. Stressful!) So no wonder you are stressed. You make stupid mistakes (Not do. Make. We make mistakes). The bad news is that these mistakes could lead to your application being rejected ( = odrzucona). The good news, though, is that the number of mistakes you can possibly make is finite ( = ograniczona, skończona).

In fact, there are ten mistakes which are most common at job interviews in English. I have put them together for you, and I will show you how to avoid them. I’ll give you tips, tricks, and trolleys ( = wózki sklepowe… doesn’t really make much sense, but it starts nicely with “tr”… 😉 ) how to avoid them.