BE 411: Get Some English Experience Under Your Belt
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This is the Business English Podcast, Episode 411. Get some English experience under your belt.

Welcome to the Business English podcast from All Ears English. Get the English skills you need to achieve your dreams in global business. For a presentation, a meeting, or your office party, this is Real Business English with your favorite American hosts, Lindsay and Michelle, coming to you from New York City and Colorado, USA. Welcome to the Business English podcast from All Ears English.

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Hey, Lindsay, how are you? Excellent, Michelle. How are you? How's it going? Good. Everything's good. Hey, Lindsay, so what kind of experience do you look for when you are adding a new member to the All Ears English team? Oh, well, it depends on the role. Is it a marketing role? Is it an administrative role? Is it a teaching role or a podcasting role?

Just depends on what I'm hiring for, Michelle. But definitely a couple of years of experience in every one of these areas at the minimum would be great for sure. Yeah, yeah. Well, today we are going to talk about experience. And this is actually the second episode in a series. And the first episode was on the All Ears English podcast. So guys, All Ears English is another one of our podcasts. It is huge. It is fun. We talk about all different...

All different things. So if you haven't listened to that, definitely go on over there and hit the follow button. The first episode, it was episode 2397 and it was called Experiences Part One. How to talk about your life. Yes, guys, go over there and hit the follow button. You'll be joining more than 200,000 other listeners. Okay. So you will not be alone over there. So yeah.

That episode was about the word experience relating to certain situations, so not necessarily time. And today we're going to talk about how experience is used in this context of how much time you've spent doing something or how much you've done something. And this is especially important for business, of course.

Yes. I mean, in our new professional English level one course, we talk a lot about interviewing. That is one of the building blocks of that course. So if you're in that course, you get a lot more practice and more context. But we're going to kind of skim the surface today, give you a couple of hints about how the word experience plays in in a lot of different ways. We don't want to say it in the same way every time.

Right now. Right. Yeah. And yeah, it's good. I mean, you can use this in interviews, talking to coworkers, talking about why you're the right person for a certain project. There's so much here. So let's get into it. So, Lindsay, what's the first one? All right. So to get some experience under your belt.

or to gain experience. I don't know why they use the word belt, but it's weird. If you think about it. Yeah. Probably comes from the cowboy days, American frontier days. I'm sure a lot of phrases come from that frontier days.

piece of moving West, like pushing West explorers and that kind of thing. So we don't really care where it comes from right now, but it's a casual way of saying gain experience. Okay. Yep. Yep. So once you get some experience under your belt, the job offers will come flying in. Mm.

Love that. All right. So I could imagine having this conversation with a mentor, a family member, maybe a friend kind of advising us on our career path. Right. Right. Yes, exactly. The next one is to be experienced in something. So that means if you're experienced in something, what does it mean?

Well, you've done the thing many times and you have some expertise. Usually expertise comes along with experience, hopefully, right? So I'm experienced in all the required software and I've been working in this field for nine years. I'm a shoo-in. And the most interesting thing about that sentence is I'm a shoo-in. Yes, I'm a shoo-in. So we're talking about belts and shoes. Belts and shoes. What's next? Boots? I mean, boots. Yeah, actually, yeah.

I'm a shoo-in. So what does that mean, Michelle? It means I'm a definite. I'm, you know, I'm an easy fit. I'm perfect, right? It means I'll get the job. Like, I'm very likely to get the job, to get hired. Yes, it's not going to be good. Yeah. Yes, exactly. Um,

And then this next one is very basic, like how you read it in a job ad or hear about it. So, okay, blank years or months of experience needed or necessary. Yeah. So you could say, I'm interested in the position, but the ad says five years of experience necessary, and I only have three. Yeah. That's an interesting conversation topic, though, because do you still apply for a job even if you're missing a slight,

amount of experience. What do you think? Well, this is a very, this is a hot topic, right? This is, this comes down to your attitude, your personality, your confidence levels, sometimes gender. There is research that ties gender into this. The equivalent of this would be at the workplace. If, you know, there's a project up for grabs, do you, and they say they're looking for someone who has this skill, this skill, this skill. Do you, do you raise your hand and say, I can do that?

Who tends to do that the most? We won't go into gender because we've been talking about that quite a bit over on the other podcast, but there's research that says that men tend to go for that more than women do. Yeah. So there's a lot there. There's a lot of deep thinking listeners here. Yes, yes, yes, exactly. And then what's another one? Okay. Someone's experience speaks for itself. So his experience speaks for itself. I definitely consider him. So it kind of means he's,

Like he doesn't need to say much. I just look at his resume and he has nine years of experience doing this. Yo, he doesn't need to convince me. Right. Right. Right. Right. Exactly. Yeah.

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Okay. So we do have two more. And what would be the next one, Michelle, that we need to learn from experience? Yes. So I like to learn from experience. To me, it's the best way. Yeah. And what would be the opposite of learn from experience? Well, to learn on the job.

Yeah. I mean, so the opposite to me would be like learn from theory or textbook. Oh, sorry. I'm not. Yeah. I wasn't sure what you were getting for getting it. Yeah. Right. True. Yeah. To learn. And it's the same as to learn from experiences. Very similar to learn on the job, learn on the job. But the opposite of that, I'm thinking about like graduate school versus just going into a field. Right. I mean, right. Theory. And we learn abstractly about the thing. And maybe there's like a practicum. Yeah.

But like business school, you know, like do you choose to go to business school and study business or do you just go into business and learn on the job? Right. That's a great debate that we could have, you know? Yeah. Yeah. It's really interesting. And then, you know, where the direction of education is going. Lots, lots to consider there. Yeah. So here's a sample sentence. I did a lot of learning on the job. Really, the most important thing is having a great attitude and being willing to learn for this position.

Okay. Nice. So, yeah, I mean, Lindsay, this does lead us to the question what you were kind of touching on is experience the most important thing. Does that get the most positive attention? Like, does just having the experience make you actually better at something or just because you have experience?

You would think most of the time, but maybe not always. I think if you've learned from your mistakes, then yeah, it does make you... I know there's a lot of companies that hire consultants that went from college to business school and then went into consulting. And sometimes I think, wow, how does that work?

You know, if that consultant hasn't been in the real world, but they've been learning frameworks. So I feel like there's a place for both. You know what I mean? There's a place like you kind of need to get a little education and experience and a little more education, a little more experience. I think it's both. I don't know. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

I agree. I think, yeah, you can't kind of be lacking in any of those areas, right? You just want to be as rich of a job candidate as possible. But I do think one hot take, and this is probably a hot take in America, is that you probably should have

experience before you go into education. I don't mean college because you go to college at 18. You don't have much experience, but I mean before graduate school. Like I'm not a proponent of going to college, then going into grad school right away. I'm more of a proponent of go to college, then go out in the world, work, get some...

some hard knocks of life learning and then take that experience, bring it into graduate school or any kind of like job training school. Maybe these days it's more about online learning, on the spot education, but like you need something to work with, right? Yeah, that's a good point. I mean, that's what I did. After I graduated, I did get experience and it was a few years later that maybe like, maybe...

like three or four years later that I went back. Yeah. I mean, same here, same here. I went, didn't go back for like 10 years, uh, six years, I guess, but I had a lot of experience, uh, you know, teaching, traveling, living abroad. And then I brought that into my graduate program and all of my peers did too. It would have been a more shallow program if those people hadn't been out in the world. Right. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. Yeah. That's a very good point. Um, so,

All right. So should we do a role play? Yes. So here we are hiring managers for a new position. Okay. Okay. Okay.

Okay, so let's put three years of experience necessary on the ad. What do you think? Yeah, I guess that would show that they have experience under their belt. But honestly, I'm more interested in the personality for this kind of position than the years of experience. Yeah, but I think we also have to learn from experience for ourselves. Remember when we hired Janet? Oh, yeah. Yeah, she wasn't a great hire. Yeah.

Yeah. I mean, we do need someone who is experienced in the software, at least. True. But they could always learn on the job. Yeah. Well, what about hiring internally? I mean, Kayla's experience speaks for itself. Yeah. But I don't think she's interested in that kind of a move. Too bad. Yeah. Very common conversation, right? When you're writing a job ad, right? Not sure that we would say the word experience that much in one conversation.

conversation. Yeah, probably not. Yeah, fair enough. But there's a lot here. So yeah, so I said, so we're kind of writing up the ad and I said, let's put three years of experience necessary. Yeah. And then I said, yeah, I guess that would show they have experience under their belt.

And this is that colloquial phrase, right? Experience under your belt. I love that one. And then you're saying, oh, you want personality more than experience. And then I'm kind of turning it back on us. And I said, yeah, but I think we also have to learn from experience for ourselves. Remember when we hired Janet? So basically it sounds like we did this once before we hired Janet because she was super cool and we liked working with her and then, and she didn't have experience and it didn't work out.

Yeah, exactly. And then we say we need someone who is experienced in the software at least, right? And then you push back and I push back and I say, oh, they could always learn on the job, right? And I'm going to say, yeah,

And then I have an idea. And I said, what about hiring internally? Kayla's experience speaks for itself. So she doesn't, it's like, she doesn't even need to tell us. We see what Kayla's doing all the time and she'd be great. Very interesting. So, you know, for some advice, for a takeaway for our listeners, you always want to be talking about

like keeping your radar out for new opportunities within your own company, right? Where are some places people are hiring for? And get used to talking about your experience and what you're learning on the job, right? We don't just save this for the times when we need a job. We do it all the time. Right.

Okay. Love it. Yep. All right. Well, guys, remember to check out that first episode about experience 2397. Again, that was experience part one experiences part one, how to talk about your life. All right, Michelle, we'll talk to you very soon. Have a good one. You too. Bye, Lindsay. Bye. Bye.

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