Office English / Selling yourself

How good are you at talking about your achievements?

Voicenote clipsI find it really painful to say, 'Oh, yeah. I'm really good at this' or 'I did a really good job at that.' I even find it embarrassing and painful to be told that, even if somebody thinks that I have done a good job.

I definitely think it's important to be able to sell yourself at work, not only for your managers and your bosses and even your colleagues to have confidence in you and your work and what you're able to produce, but also to give yourself that confidence.

In today's episode of Office English, we're talking about how to sell yourself at work.

Hello and welcome to Office English from BBC Learning English. I'm Pippa.

And I'm Phil. In this podcast we discuss the language you need to help you succeed at work.

What do we mean, when we say that you should sell yourself, Phil? And why do we need to do it?

OK well, we don't literally mean we should sell ourselves. But when we sell someone or something metaphorically, we're saying positive things to make that person or thing sound good. So to sell yourself you say positive things about yourself. And this is useful at work because sometimes in order to progress in our careers, we need important people to notice and appreciate the work that we're doing.

Right, so you might need to sell yourself in a job interview for example, or if you're meeting with your boss to talk about your career, or even if you're talking to a potential customer or client at work because you might want to impress them and you might want to sell yourself and sell the company, as it were.

Now, some people hate saying good things about themselves, so we'll start with how to talk about your strengths and then we'll discuss the kinds of questions you might be asked in an interview or by your manager that give you an opportunity to sell yourself.