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