This week, I had an unexpected interview come up with a Korean advertising agency. The interview was the final step of my review process and if I passed the interview, then I would be able to join the company first as an intern and then segway into a full-time position. Because of this interview, I refocused my language goal for the week so that I would just focus on preparation for the interview. The interview took place on Wednesday night (Thursday morning KST).
Since I wasn't sure whether this interview would be in Korean or English, I decided to prepare interview answers in both languages. Therefore, I first created a document of possible questions which I came up by asking my Korean friends about the interview questions they typically experience. The purpose of including the questions themselves was to make sure I could recognize the question that should trigger my answer. For example, "Explain your career goals? And how this company relates to your goals?" is roughly "경력 목표를 설명하십시오. 그리고 이 회사는 당신의 목표와 어떻게 관련이 있습니까?" in Korean. From there, I created my English responses and began translating some responses to Korean. I met with my language partner to translate more difficult passages and go over grammar points.
This turned out to be a challenging assignment because I had to imagine the full course of a conversation, the needed formality level, and how to keep the conversation conversational yet still professional.
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