You're learning with nine to five English.
Business English for the workplace.
Hi Tim here with another nine-to-five English lesson. In today's lesson we're
going to have a look at how to talk about your career. In your working life
you'll have lots of chances to talk about your career. It's not only a topic
in job interviews but pretty much anytime we meet someone new.
everyone wants to know what you do for a living and what you've done in the past.
And that's basically what a career is - all of the things you have done and now do in a
particular field of work and when you meet someone new
what's one bit of information that you're always curious about well if
you're like me you want to know about the companies they've worked for because
this is such an interesting point of conversation you need to know how to
talk about your past employers or where you have worked one easy way is to say
you were at a company you can also say you were with a company it doesn't
matter if you use at or with since they have the same meaning here another
common and simple expression is just to say you worked for a company now another
bit of interesting information we often mention is how long we worked for a
company you can do that just by adding a time expression like for five years or
you can say you spent a certain amount of time with a company
how about practicing some of this language we're going to give you some
examples after you hear each example try repeating it yourself ready let's give
it a go before coming to HP I was at IBM for
five years
I used to work in sales from Massey Ferguson
I spent 10 years with Bosch in Frankfurt
for most of my career I was with Rogers cable
all right talking about your past employers is an important part of
talking about your career but people also want to know what type of work
you've done when I say type of work I mean two things first I mean the actual
kind of work you do like graphic design or sales so you might say I do graphic
design or I work in sales that's important information about a person
isn't it but the type of work you do might also mean what field or area you
work in so that might be finance manufacturing retail government or
engineering just to give a few examples and when you talk about your field you
can say you have worked in an area or just you have been in an area of course
you can imagine how topics like this can open the door to lots more conversation
and if you're talking to someone new that's really important early in the
conversation you want to find interesting topics to explore further
now it's your turn to try using these expressions just like before you'll hear
some examples after each example you can repeat what
you hear let's begin I've worked mainly in government
I've been in sales my whole career
I work in IT particularly in finance and related fields
I do a lot of graphic and web design work
as you've heard to talk about your type of work you can say you have worked in
or have been in a certain field like engineering or you can talk about the
present by saying you work in or do a kind of job in any case that little word
in is pretty useful when you talk about your type of work now that we've done
some practice with these useful expressions let's hear how this all
sounds in an actual conversation let's listen to Todd
asking Steve about his career Steve mentions his past employers and the type
of work he does so you said you worked in London yeah that's right I spent five
years with Lloyds Lloyd's huh so you're in finance no actually I mainly do
communications in PR work
how did that sound as you heard Todd asks about where Steve used to work and
he mentions he spent five years with Lloyds which is an insurance company and
when Todd asks about type of work Steve says he does communications and PR work
now it's your turn to practice will repeat the dialogue but this time we're
going to be bout Steve's words you will have to say those parts yourself
remember first you'll say you spent five years with Lloyds then you'll say you do
communications and PR work here we go so you said you worked in London
Lloyd's huh so you're in finance
you
all right so today we learned how to talk about our career that includes
talking about your past employers and about the type of work you do in our
next lesson we'll learn how to talk about your family until then so long and
happy learning