How to Make Small Talk During An Interview - With Examples

so you're at your interview and you're waiting for your interviewer to come get you and you're sitting in the lobby your interviewer arrives they say hi they shake your hand and then the two of you begin a long walk to the interview room and there is silence and the whole time your mind is racing a thousand miles a minute and you're thinking should i be talking first what do i even say is this really awkward is this hurting my chance of getting the job and before you know it you're in the room and the door is closed and your interview has begun and that feeling deep inside your gut of uncertainty and worry that's the feeling of a lost opportunity make no mistake small talk is very important towards your chance of being liked and succeeding in your interview like it or not being likable is a factor in a lot of interviews even if your interviewer is professional and unbiased and experienced and they don't take into account your likability your ability to make small talk indicates critical skills like building relationships building rapport communicating and a lot of jobs those are critical skills that you will be evaluated on so small talk is just an extended part of that so how do you actually make good small talk that's what we're going to be covering in today's video in fact i'm not only going to give you four critical tips that are going to help you to succeed but i'm actually going to give you some examples and sample lines that you can use to kick start and continue some chit chat with your interviewer in your next interview so are you ready to get started i am so let's talk shop i completely understand that small talk doesn't come naturally to a lot of people maybe you don't enjoy small talk i can relate to that maybe english isn't your first language maybe you're shy but given the reality that small talk is important you owe it to yourself to at least understand how to do it and go through the motions if only to make sure that you're optimizing your chances of succeeding and to help you achieve that i'm going to give you four tips that will help you to succeed in your interview and help you to shine during your small talk the first tip is to find common ground when it comes to building rapport and a feeling of closeness with your interviewer during that short time period of your interview it's going to be essential to create a connection with them and there are a lot of ways to create connections with people but one of the most reliable and quick ways is to find common ground but how do you know what you actually have in common with a total stranger well skip the 20 questions because you only have at most a couple minutes before your interview or after your interview formally wraps up to actually have that chit chat so you're gonna need to do your homework beforehand before the interview what i like to do is create my interviewer on linkedin so i usually go onto the profile and i'll see if they have previous companies interests things that they like to do volunteering those are all clues into what someone not only enjoys but actually wants to share with other professionals so i take a look through there and usually i can pick up one or two things now it's possible that you won't be able to pick up anything if they don't have a complete profile or they just don't share anything and so in that situation there's always one thing that you can fall back on no matter what interview no matter what situation and that is that you and your interviewer are naturally both interested in the company that you're interviewing with so that's something that you can draw upon and we'll actually go into a specific example of how you can talk about a company later on in this video the second tip is to let your interviewer take the lead what i mean by that is let your interviewer set the pace and tone of the conversation as a general rule of thumb don't get more personal than your interviewer does so for example if your interviewer is talking about the weather and they're leading with that probably not a good idea to ask them about their family situation or on the inverse opposite side if your interviewer starts off by asking you about your personal hobbies and your interests take that as a sign of genuine interest and rise to their level in terms of the intimacy and level of detail that you share so feel free to share about your passions and your interests outside of work the key is that you want to ride on the same wavelength as your interviewer and you don't want to exceed their level of comfort because that can quickly devolve into something that's a bit awkward and naturally silences can occur from that the third tip is short and sweet but it's very important and that is to focus on good vibes only there are typically many topics that you could choose from to start a conversation and to keep it going so try to focus on the ones that bring up good feelings and good emotions as opposed to negative ones because your chat and your small talk is actually just an extended first impression that that interviewer has of you and so you're going to want to make sure that you leave that interviewer feeling positive things and feeling positive towards you that can actually make a huge difference as opposed to having some negative feelings that kind of permeate through the conversation or through the interview the fourth and final tip is to listen this is probably the most important tip of all because without this one all of the other three tips that i've mentioned before may only get you as far as one or two lines into a conversation before it just kind of peters off in silence listening is so much more than just hearing and understanding what your interviewer is saying you're going to want to think carefully about the types of things that they're bringing up their content and what it means because the implications or the meaning of what they're saying is the tidbit that you want to grab onto and use as a launching point for further conversation typically in conversation no matter how short or succinct we are as long as we aren't giving one-word answers we're gonna drop some hints about things that we're interested in or things that we want to talk about in conversation so you're going to want to pick up on those things and use those to further your conversation and continue it now interviews and small talk and chit chat are all dynamic meaning there's no one formula that i can provide to you that will help you to cover everything but i am aware that there are some things that can really help you to get started so you can talk about how your interviewers work week has been so far if it's late to midweek and they've had a chance to actually get into it or you can ask them about their weekend if it's early on in the week and those events will still be fresh and relevant you can touch upon something that you read about the company or that you heard about the company you can talk about the decor or the design of the office as you're walking through it live that tends to be quite relevant no matter what situation it is and finally you can also just ask them about how their morning has been so far or afternoon depending on when you're interviewing and any of these one-liner conversation starters can actually help a lot because they prompt answers and responses that are more than just a yes or no answer so your interviewer is actually thinking about what they're going to say they're engaged and they're going to provide you with ideally a more meaty response that will allow you to jump off of that and continue but wait there's more in order to really drive home the four tips that i mentioned earlier i'm actually going to give you a sample conversation that you might have with an interviewer and i'm gonna walk through the four tips and how they apply within this conversation so i'm going to be playing the parts of both the interviewer as well as you and so i apologize in advance for my poor voice acting but bear with me while i go through this example so you might say i recently read some interesting news about acme oh really what was it it's all over the industry news you're planning to enter into a joint venture with zenith corp right that's actually really a huge undertaking but it sounds exciting oh yeah it's making waves internally for sure feels like everyone is involved in making sure that joint venture is a success nice are you or your department involved in the preparation as well not directly but we play an important supporting role to ensure that the executing team has what they need that's going to be a unique experience to be part of i had the opportunity to support a merger for my current company a while back it's not exactly the same but i can definitely relate to the work that goes into preparation does your team support a lot of high profile initiatives such as this one you can unmute me now obviously this conversation could continue going on depending on how much you and your interviewer connect and how much time there is but i think it's enough to stop there the thing to note here is that your interviewer in this example is actually not really talking your ear off right they're not providing you a whole lot on a silver platter that you can take away and use as conversation fodder they're actually pretty brief but even in this situation which is probably one of the more difficult conversations that you might have to keep you can notice that there are still some tidbits that you can hang on to in order to generate more conversation so in terms of the four tips that we discussed you are obviously listening because you're not only understanding what they're saying but you're showing an interest in the tidbits that they're revealing within what they're saying you're also keeping things positive because you're focusing on a good development for the company and you're focusing on their positive contributions to it you are also letting your interviewer take the lead because they are the ones that are driving the conversation forward and you're asking them questions or reacting based on what they're saying and so you can feel confident that this is not going to make them feel uncomfortable and finally you're finding common ground with your interviewer because you're mentioning a previous experience that you had that is somewhat related to their experience but one thing i'm going to leave you with is the next thing that you need to do is actually go out and practice it grab a friend and run a sample conversation by them can be a little weird but trust me it's super helpful or if you don't have a friend you can always practice in front of a mirror or you can record yourself but either way things like these are very important to actually practice and roll up your sleeves and do as opposed to just learning the theory so now that you have the principles go ahead and apply them if you like this video give it a like and if you have any experiences where you've had really good small talk or maybe not so good small talk feel free to share those in the comments below i'm sure me and the community would be super interested to hear about your own experience and again we're dropping videos weekly that will help you in your job search and interviews to help you stand out so subscribe and ring the bell for all notifications and we'll update you every time a new video drops thanks for watching and good luck in your interview

Channel: Talk Shop

Views: 5,723

Rating: 4.974359 out of 5

Keywords: small talk interview examples, how to make small talk, how to make small talk interview, small talk before interview

Id: cZyP19U1mL8

Length: 12min 47sec (767 seconds)

Published: Wed Aug 12 2020