Keigo for job interviews: the phrases that matter

Honorific Japanese is where N2 candidates lose marks and interviews. Here are the patterns worth drilling.

Interviewers are not testing whether you can produce perfect sonkeigo on demand. They are checking whether you can stay consistently polite under pressure without switching registers mid-sentence.

Master four building blocks first: いたします, させていただきます, ございます and お/ご + verb stem + します. These cover the majority of what you will actually say in a 30-minute interview.

Practise the self-introduction until it is automatic. When the opening 60 seconds are fluent, your nerves settle and the rest of the interview sounds noticeably better.