Stop using 'big words' during job interviews: Candidate says this 'dumb' advice boosts up confidence during questions

Job interviews can become difficult for reasons that have little to do with a candidate’s actual experience. Sometimes, the pressure to sound professional can make people overthink even simple questions. Instead of explaining what they actually did at work, candidates may start reaching for corporate phrases, complicated words and familiar interview buzzwords, hoping they will sound more capable.

A Reddit user recently shared how an unexpected piece of advice from his brother helped him get out of that habit during a panel interview. The advice was simple: stop trying to sound like a corporate professional and explain things the same way you would explain them to a normal person.

The advice that changed his approach

According to the Reddit post, the candidate was appearing for an operations analyst position in a three-person panel interview conducted over Zoom.


The interview initially went normally, but things changed when one interviewer asked him about a time when he had to handle conflicting priorities from different stakeholders.

The candidate said he became stuck thinking about how he was supposed to answer the question. Instead of simply explaining the situation, he started using phrases such as “aligning deliverables” and “cross functional visibility”.

He noticed one of the interviewers, identified as Greg in the post, stop writing notes. That made him even more nervous.

After the interview, he called his brother to discuss what had happened. His brother, who works in construction and was not familiar with corporate interviews, gave him a blunt response.

However, the borther adviced, “Why are you talking like a linkedin post. just tell them what actually happened at your job like you're telling me.”

He followed that with another line that the Reddit user said stayed with him: “if your story needs big words to sound impressive, it probably isn't impressve.”

Stop trying to sound impressive

The candidate realised that his normal way of describing work was actually much easier to understand.

When speaking to his brother, he would explain a workplace problem in straightforward terms. For example, he might say that his boss wanted one task finished by Tuesday while another manager wanted a different task completed by the same deadline, so he had to decide which one was more important.

But during interviews, he would turn the same situation into something filled with phrases such as “strategic alignment” and “stakeholder management”.

That, he felt, was making his answers less clear.

Before another interview, he practised with his brother over FaceTime for about 15 minutes. His brother interrupted whenever he slipped back into corporate jargon. At one point, he reportedly told him, “i dont know what that means, say it again like a normal person.”

The exercise was irritating at first, but the candidate said it helped.

Simple answers bring confidence

During the next interview, he still felt nervous. However, when asked about handling competing deadlines, he focused on explaining what actually happened rather than trying to make the answer sound sophisticated.

This time, he said the interviewer followed up with another question. For him, that felt very different from the earlier experience where he felt the panel had become disengaged.

The bigger lesson, according to the Reddit user, was that he had confused sounding intelligent with communicating well.

The discussion around the post also reflected that there may not be one rule for every interview. One commenter said they use some industry terminology to demonstrate familiarity with the field, while keeping the language understandable.

Another commenter pointed out that jargon can be appropriate when a technical concept is being discussed, but candidates should still explain specialised information clearly when the audience may not know the terminology.

Why some candidates struggle with jargon

Several commenters said they had faced the opposite problem too. One person said they performed better when speaking naturally in earlier interview rounds but were later criticised for not being articulate enough for a senior leadership position.

That highlights an important part of the discussion: interviewers and workplaces differ. In some roles, using the vocabulary of the industry is expected. In others, a candidate may be judged more on whether they can explain complicated situations clearly.

The Reddit discussion also brought up George Orwell’s essay Politics and the English Language. One commenter noted that Orwell's advice included avoiding long words when a shorter one would work and avoiding jargon when an everyday English equivalent is available.

For job seekers, the practical takeaway is less about removing every professional term from an answer and more about knowing why a particular word is being used.

If a simple explanation communicates the point, adding several corporate phrases may not make the answer stronger. In an interview, the experience behind the words still needs to be clear.