How To Improve Your Interview Performance?

How To Improve Your Interview Performance?
How To Improve Your Interview Performance?

Introduction

Communication skills are often the most overlooked skill when freshers prepare for their interviews. Many of them focus solely on their technical skills, which isn’t the best route to take. Technical skills are essential, but communication skills are also equally important. According to a survey by Forbes, communication skill is the top soft skill that a company wants in an employee.

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Communication skills are very important in technical interviews. When an interviewer asks you a question, not only do you have to solve that problem, you also need to explain your algorithm, your approach, and your logic.


To make sure that you perform well in your interview, your explanation and answer must be crisp and clear. In addition, the message that you want to deliver to your interviewer should be well formatted and easy to understand.

Today in this article, we will discuss how to improve your communication skills to improve your interview performance.

If you want to learn the art of communication to improve your interview performance with some practical tips, check out this video by Ankush Singla, Co-Founder and Instructor at Coding Ninjas.

What are communication skills?

Communication skills mean how well you are able to deliver the message or thoughts to another person. So the ability to communicate effectively with another person is generally referred to as communication skills. But with everything being digital now, the way you talk to any other person over email, message, or phone call is also a part of communication skills.

People always misinterpret communication skills as English speaking skills. It is essential to know that communication skills and English skills are different, and you don’t necessarily have to speak well in English to be a great communicator.

That being said, it is also essential to understand that the interviewers during your interview might not always know Hindi or your native language. So it becomes critical to speak well in English.

So this breaks the article into two parts to focus on, the first being communication skills and the other being English speaking skills.

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Effective ways to improve communication skills

If you feel your communication skills are weak, then don’t worry. Here are some practical tips that will help you improve your communication skills and interview performance.

  • Public Speaking: public speaking is one of the best and the proven way to improve your communication skills. Speaking out in public will help you know your weakness and help you to articulate your speaking in a well-structured manner. You can take part in debates or various speaking in-public activities. This will not only help you in improving speaking skills but will also remove stage phobia.
  • Active Listening: A good communicator is always a good listener. Always practice active listening. Make the interviewer or speaker feel that you are actively listening to him/her ask some follow-up questions and doubts.
  • Focus on non-verbal communication: Communication is not only about the things that we speak verbally but also deals with your body language and facial expressions. Therefore, always pay attention to your body language and expression. You should also try to maintain eye contact and avoid unnecessary hand gestures or too many hand gestures.
  • To improve your communication skills, you can teach your junior or batch mates in college about any technology or concepts you are good at. Teaching is one of the best ways to improve communication skills as you will be getting active feedback and making sure that everybody gets to understand what you are trying to explain.

How to improve your English Skills?

As we mentioned before, communication skills can be broken into two parts for an interview: your general communication skills and others being English, as we already addressed in the former part. Let’s discuss how to improve your English speaking skills.

  • Try to converse in English with your friend, or you can try to connect to any online chat rooms or call platform to talk to people in English over there. Speaking is the best way to learn English as it involves your active participation, and you would be getting feedback from the person you are speaking to, which will help you improve.
  • To improve your English, you can watch movies in English. This is because watching movies will help you to feel and express your emotions in English. But keep in mind that the English you would be learning by watching movies would be more informal, but it would help you expand your vocabulary.
  • Reading articles, blogs, and books in English can help you a lot to improve your English. This is one of the best ways as, while reading informative content, you will be improving your English. Always try to note down and search for the meaning of the words that you don’t understand. This will help you to add more words to your vocabulary.
  • To improve your English, you can try to pen down your thoughts. While reading the blogs and articles, you can also try to comment on that article or blog, which will give you the confidence to write something in public and express your thoughts.

How to Practice for Interviews?

We talked about improving general communication skills that are crucial to excel in your interviews and to improve your interview performance. One point to keep in mind is that your communication skills are far more important than your English speaking skills. In an interview, you will be judged on your technical skills rather than your English skills. So, if you can convey your message, that would work fine to clear interviews.

When you are asked any coding question in interviews, you are supposed to solve it and need to explain the logic, algorithm, and thought process to the interviewer. To improve upon this, you can try to speak out loud while solving any question. In addition, you can try to record yourself while solving and then go back to that recording and iterate over it, list out your faults and try to improve those.

Always pay great attention to your hand gestures, body language, and expressions; as we discussed earlier, communication is not only about what we speak/write but also about our body language and gestures. Your body language should be confident. To improve your body language and expression, speak to yourself in front of the mirror. This will help you to improve your body language and will also boost your confidence. You can also participate in debates and speech competitions.

To remove the fear of interviews, try to participate in as many mock interviews as you can. To improve your English, try to talk in English with yourself and the people around you. Prepare for HR rounds beforehand, try to prepare rough answers for the frequently asked question like

  • Tell me about yourself?
  • Why should we hire you?
  • What are your strengths and weaknesses?

Preparing frequently asked questions will help you to express yourself more clearly and will also help to remove fear.

Listening skills are also an integral part of communication. Always pay attention while listening to your interviewer; this will help you understand the questions better, and you will be able to answer the interviewer in a more precise manner.

To improve your listening skill, try to listen to any podcast and write it down or try to express it in your words. This will help you to improve your listening skills as well as it will help you to expand your vocabulary.  

These are some tips that can help you improve your communication skills. Don’t panic before your interview, and just try to give your best. Follow the above tips to improve your communication skills, and you will succeed.                                             

Get equipped for the Technical Interviews with this blog.

Frequently Asked Questions

What are the five good communication skills?

The five good communication skills are:

1. Listening
2. Non-verbal communication
3. Volume and clarity
4. Be clear and concise
5. Have an excellent ability to articulate your thoughts.

How good are your communication skills?

If you are asked this question during the interview, you can answer it like: I have strong communication skills. I am well versed in communicating in Hindi and English with full working proficiency. Moreover, I can clearly convey my message to my audience and have good listening skills, which aids communication ability.

What are good communication skills examples?

Some good communication skills are:

1. Listening
2. Non-verbal communication
3. Volume and clarity
4. Be clear and concise
5. Have an excellent ability to articulate your thoughts.

What is the meaning of good communication skills?

Good communication skills mean that you can convey and receive messages clearly and concisely. Therefore, good communication skills are the essential skills that you should possess.

How can I improve my communication skills in an interview?

To improve your communication skills, you should keep the following points in mind.

1. Try to speak in public, participate in debates or speech competitions
2. Listening is very important. Always try to be a good listener first.
3. Focus on your body language, hand movement, and speaking style.

Key Takeaways

This article talked about communication skills to improve your interview performance. The article also discussed in-depth communication skills and why a person should have good communication skills.

The article also discussed the ways to improve English speaking skills to improve interview performance.

By Pranchal Agrahari