“Tell us about your experience” is the heart of the interview. Many people know what they did, but describe it with weak verbs or the wrong tense, so their experience sounds smaller than it is. Here are three simple rules that make your experience sound as big as it really is.
Rule one: pick the right tense
For a job you’ve left, use the past simple. For your current job, use the present or the present perfect.
A past job: At my last company, I handled customer complaints for the Cairo branch.
Your current job: I’ve worked as a sales coordinator for two years. I manage orders for forty clients.
Rule two: use strong verbs
Instead of “I was responsible for”, start with a verb that shows what you did. Useful ones: managed, led, improved, reduced, trained, built.
Not: I was responsible for the new employees.
Say: I trained twelve new employees in my first year.
Rule three: add a number
A number makes an achievement real and easy to remember: how many people, what percentage, how much time you saved.
Not: I made the reports faster.
Say: I cut the time to prepare monthly reports from five days to two.
Try it on your own experience
Write three sentences about your current or last job: the right tense, a strong verb, and at least one number. Then say them out loud until you know them.
You don’t need difficult words. A short sentence with a strong verb and a number beats a long paragraph.
