The Role of Voice and Accent in Job Interviews

When it comes to landing your dream job, most people focus on polishing their résumé, practising common interview questions, and researching the company. But there’s another factor that plays a huge role in how you’re perceived — your voice and accent.

In a job interview, your words matter — but how you say them can matter even more.

 Why Your Voice Matters

Your voice is more than just a tool for communication — it’s part of your personal brand. The tone, pace, and clarity of your speech can instantly influence whether you come across as confident, competent, and trustworthy.

Here’s what interviewers often pick up on: 

1. Clarity – Clear speech signals professionalism and attention to detail.

2. Confidence – A steady, well-projected voice makes you sound self-assured.

3. Energy – A lively tone helps you sound engaged and interested in the role.

A nervous, rushed, or monotone delivery can unintentionally send the wrong message — even if your answers are perfect.

 Accent and First Impressions

In today’s global job market, accents are normal — but they can still affect comprehension. If an interviewer struggles to understand you, they might (consciously or unconsciously) question your ability to communicate effectively with clients, colleagues, or stakeholders.

This doesn’t mean you need to erase your accent entirely. But reducing a heavy accent and improving pronunciation can make your speech easier to follow, helping you connect with your interviewer and keep their focus on your skills and ideas — not on deciphering your words.

Key Skills to Improve Before Your Interview

If you want to make a strong vocal impression, focus on these areas: 

1. Pronunciation – Aim for crisp, accurate sounds, especially for common industry terms.

2. Pace – Slow enough to be clear, but not so slow that you lose momentum.

3. Pausing – Use pauses to emphasize key points and give the interviewer time to process.

4. Intonation – Add variety to your pitch to sound natural and engaging.

5. Volume & Projection – Speak loudly enough to be heard without sounding aggressive.

How to Train Your Voice for Interview Success 

Improving your voice and accent doesn’t have to take years — with targeted practice, you can make noticeable changes in just weeks.

Get Rid of Your Accent for Business app provides: 

Audio models of clear, neutral English speech.

Step-by-step lessons to improve pronunciation and intonation.

Record & compare tools to track your progress.

Practice materials based on real-world speaking situations, including interviews.

By training your ear, practising key sounds, and mastering vocal techniques, you can walk into your interview sounding confident, professional, and easy to understand.

Your qualifications get you in the door, but your communication skills can seal the deal. A clear, confident voice helps interviewers focus on you — your ideas, your expertise, and your potential. 

Ready to sound your best in your next interview?

Start training today with the Get Rid of Your Accent for Business app — your personal voice coach, right in your pocket.

194. When /r/ is pronounced and when not?

In British English /r/ is not always pronounced:

  1. In three vowels /ɑː/ as “car” and /ɜː/ as in “Sir”, /ɔː/ as in “fork”.

  2. In the three diphthongs /eə/ as in “pair”, /ɪə/ as in “ear”, and /ʊə/ as in “sure”

  3. In place of schwa: doctor, teacher, sponsor

    N.B: Unless it is a linking /r/ as in “car accident, under arrest” where the first word ends with /r/ and the next word starts with the vowel sound.

In American English /r/ is always pronounced, and they have two schwas:

1. Coloured schwa where /r/ is pronounced in words such as “sponsor, doctor, teacher

2. Schwa in words such as “away, agree, the

The /r/ sound should be pronounced between two vowel sounds in words such as “cherry, carriage, marriage”.

The /r/ is difficult to pronounce because of a particular tongue position.

Speech organs position for the English /r/ sound:
The tip of the tongue curls back slightly in the roof of the mouth, just behind the alveolar ridge, and the breath squeezes past whilst the tongue is still and not vibrating.

Some people with lazy tongues substitute /r/ with /w/ sound, Johnanat Ross does that, instead of “red roses he says “wed woses”. Some people do not pronounce /r/ at all. Japanese and Chinese often pronounce it as /l/ sound and they say “lead” instead of “read”.

You can master all sounds of English including the /r/ sound with the apps based RP:
‎Elocution Lessons, Get Rid of your Accent UK1, and ‎Fluent English Speech (British English) or ‎ American Accent App and ‎Fluent American Speech (American English), and Power, Pitch, Pace, Pause.
There are also two accompanying video courses: Get Rid of your Accent Part 1 and Get rid of your Accent Part 2.

The same apps are also available on Google Play. The functionality is ideal: read, listen, record and compare your speech with the model (actors with perfect pronunciation were used to create soundtracks for these apps). The apps have spelling variations for all English sounds and mouth diagrams to help you make the correct speech organ positions in words, phrases and poetry.
When starting your practice with these apps, go to “How to use this app” and click on: the difficult sounds typical for your nationality, then click on your nationality to work effectively with a more focused approach.

The apps contain:

  1. Spelling variations for all sounds

  2. Fluency and difficult speech patterns exercises

  3. Intonation and sentence stress exercises

  4. Pronunciation and articulation exercises

  5. Tongue twisters

More on www.batcsglobal.com

186. Does correct pronunciation come with time as we learn new words and phrases?

Correct pronunciation depends on many factors:

  1. At what age do you start learning English

  2. How good is your listening/copying abilities

  3. Have you learned English from the start with correct pronunciation

If you start learning English as a child in an English-speaking country from people who speak RP then your pronunciation will be good.

If you start learning English words and phrases abroad at the age of 26 from non-RP speakers (like I did) then you will likely have a foreign accent and bad pronunciation.

I have decided to master my pronunciation and with my partner, speech coach Linda James, I have created a full line of apps for iOS and Android, paperback, audio and e-books, and video courses:

Elocution Apps for iOS
Android Apps
Elocution Books
Elocution Video Courses
New# Elocution Courses

Useful links:
How to prepare a 2-minute speech
Think and speak with power and persuasion

How to proceed with accent reduction:

  • Book a speech analysis via Skype to get a personalized assessment and recommendation.

  • For steady progress, buy an elocution course suitable to your needs

  • For the fastest progress, add in-person lessons in London or Skype lessons to your book/app/video course combination.

Accent reduction tips

  1. Identify English sounds that are difficult to pronounce for you and your nationality For example /w/ sound does not exist in French and French substitute it with /v/ sound.

  2. Learn the placement of the tongue lips and jaw for sounds you need to practice

  3. Use the mirror to control the correct place of your tongue, lips and jaw for a particular sound

  4. Listen to the model pronunciation, copy it, then record yourself and compare your speech with the model. Do three repetitions of one exercise

  5. Download the apps ‎‎Elocution Lessons, Get Rid of your Accent UK1 and ‎Fluent English Speech (British English) or ‎American Accent App and ‎Fluent American Speech (American English)

More on Get Rid of your Accent | Elocution Lessons

182. Get Rid of Indian accent

We had many students from India and the main reason why their speech was difficult to understand is that they spoke very quickly. This fact leads to two issues when they speak English:

  1. They clip long vowels and diphthongs and do not lean on them. Failure to create long vowels and diphthongs makes speech difficult to understand

  2. They fail to make appropriate grammatical pauses to separate their ideas. As a result, what they said becomes difficult to absorb.

As well as that, because many English sounds do not exist in India, Indian speakers of English have difficulties pronouncing:

  1. The /w/ sound as in “win”, they substitute it with /v/ as in “vet”

  2. /θ/ and /ð/ sound as in “think” and “that”. They substitute with /t/ and /d/ sounds as in “tick” and “Dad”

  3. /r/ as in “rat”, they vibrate the tip of the tongue and as a result, it does not sound English. In English Standard pronunciation, when pronouncing the /r/ sound the tongue is curled and kept still.

Our first recommendation would be to practise long and short vowels and their comparisons first, and after that practise all diphthongs with the apps ‎‎Elocution Lessons, Get Rid of your Accent UK1, ‎and Business English Speech. The same apps are also available on Google Play. They are based on bestselling books in the series Get Rid of your Accent and have audio and recording buttons. Work with these apps together with the accompanying video course Get Rid of your Accent Part 1

Once all the sounds are sorted, we suggest working on sentence stress and intonation with the Fluent English Speech app and the accompanying video course Get rid of your Accent Part 2.

The real game changer would be to slow down the pace of the speech with the app Power, Pitch, Pace, Pause.

More on Get Rid of your Accent | Elocution Lessons