Candidates' Corner:
Oral Proficiency and the Job Applicant

Getting interviewed for a job can be nerve-wracking; most applicants fret over their clothes, their hair, the font in their resumés. Most of all, they worry about what to say during the interview itself, and by the time the appointment comes around, the applicants are a bundle of nerves. To top it all off, they are given the Oral Proficiency interview, which they don’t expect at all and makes it harder to think of the right answers to the interview questions.

The Oral Proficiency test, however, is very necessary, especially for job seekers wishing to get into a call center, which requires the sharpest communication skills of its agents. To help job seekers prepare for their oral proficiency test, the following interview with Anna Estravello, Jano Ramos and Lou Anne Young, three John Clements oral proficiency assessors, gives some insight into what goes on during the screening.

Interviewees are assessed according to their Accent, Fluency, Pronoun-Letter Confusion, Grammar, Vocabulary, Prepositions, and the use of Idiomatic Expressions, and interviewees are graded on a scale of 1 to 7. Rocky Peltzman’s article, Speak English Well & Get Hired, also published in this newsletter, goes into this with greater depth, but will also be covered here.

Accent covers how much someone sounds like a native English speaker. For most call centers, this means sounding like an American when speaking in English. Developing an American accent means taking note of one’s own accent and listening closely to how Americans speak, and also takes a lot of practice.

Fluency is the clarity with which someone communicates ideas. Pausing in between words, using “umm”, and “ah”, or unnecessarily stringing sentences together with “and”, “but”, and other conjunctions gets in the way of fluency. Giving short, one-word answers doesn’t help, either. “Sometimes the applicants only give us only a line or two for an answer, and that’s not enough for us to gauge their proficiency. Most of the time, they only answer what is asked, and we find it difficult to probe for more elaborate answers,” Estravello elaborates.

Pronoun-Letter Confusion is also a problematic area for most Filipinos. Fathers get called “she”, or parents are referred to as “it”, in a lot of the interviews, recounts Young. It just takes a little concentration and taking note of the gender to avoid these mistakes, and as always, a lot of practice. Letter confusion arises when people confuse certain letter sounds, like /p/ and /f/, /b/ and /v/, /th/ and /d/, and all three interviewers agree that the people they interview aren’t aware of their own accents.

In Grammar, the most common mistakes are found in subject-verb agreement and tense consistency, says Ramos. “When asked ‘What did you do before lunch?’ an applicant would answer, ‘I took a shower, and then I cook my lunch, and I go here,’ forgetting the use of the past tense.”

The final three aspects, while no less important than the previous four, aren’t given as much emphasis. If an interviewee has problematic basic grammar, it’s not likely that he has a good vocabulary, a command of idiomatic expressions, or working knowledge of prepositions. Improving one’s vocabulary involves, as always, a lot of practice: reading, listening to good English speakers and speaking—without fear of making mistakes or being corrected.

There is, however, a more practical aspect to the Oral Proficiency Test, and this applies to all kinds of interviews. The three English assessors all say that the candidates they meet are mostly unprepared for their interviews.

One prominent sign of bad preparation is an inability to follow instructions. “Before the interview starts,” says Ramos, “we remind them to answer in straight English, and in complete sentences at all times. If they don’t answer in complete sentences, then we can’t assess how good their grammar is.” This may seem a simple, even obvious piece of advice. Estravello, however, notes that interviewees forget this all the time. Some just give one-word answers (“yes”, “no”, or “opo”). Some even ask, right after the instructions are given, if they can just answer in Tagalog.

Candidates are advised to practice answering these simple questions before the interview. A well-practiced “My name is Juanita de la Cruz,” for example, could spell the difference between getting a job and being turned down.

“We also make sure that when we say ‘oral proficiency’,” he adds, “we focus more of how they construct sentences and how candidates can follow instructions. We start with simple questions, like ‘What’s your name, where do you live,” then move on to questions that require longer answers, like ‘what did you do yesterday?’”

Sometimes interviewees don’t understand the questions themselves. For example, one of the questions in the script is, “Do you have relatives living in the U.S.?” One candidate actually answered, “Yes, my mother. She’s in Japan.” Paying close attention to the questions, even asking the interviewer to repeat them, can help avoid answering carelessly.

At this point, it becomes painfully obvious how unprepared most candidates are for their interviews. Ramos gives some sound advice: “Know the position you’re applying for. If you don’t, do some research on the job you want. Call the company with the available opening you want to get. Go online and Google it. You have to know the job description and evaluate yourself and your capabilities to see if you can do the job and if you can use English effectively in that line of work.” Researching the details of a job also shows an interviewer how serious an applicant is about getting the position.

It also helps for candidates to anticipate questions, to be sure they know what to answer in the interview. They should also be prepared to volunteer information about themselves. They can also ask friends what they were asked in their own job interviews to get an idea of what questions will be asked. This preparation will help a candidate keep a calm and level head during an interview, since he has confidence in what he knows about the job and about what will be asked.

In the end, what an Oral Proficiency assessor is looking for is two things: first, a high level of English proficiency—which can be achieved through daily practice—and second, an ability to follow instructions to the letter. Having a good dose of self-confidence also helps.