Interview English · Urdu speakers
English interview tips for Urdu speakers
If you grew up speaking Urdu and studied in English-medium schools in Karachi, Lahore or Islamabad, your written English is often better than that of the person interviewing you. Then the interview starts, and a different English comes out: "Janab, I will be highly obliged if given the chance, and Insha'Allah I will prove myself." The words are perfect. The impression, to a manager in Dubai, Riyadh, Birmingham or Toronto, is of a candidate who is asking for a favour rather than describing what they can do.
That gap between the English you write and the English you speak under pressure is what this guide closes. It names the specific Urdu habits that leak into spoken English, shows a rewrite for each, works through a full STAR answer, and gives you three phrases to retire tonight. It is not about sounding less Pakistani. It is about sounding as capable in English as you already are in Urdu.
Updated 2026-09-05 · about 12 min read
What the interviewer actually hears
An interviewer scoring six candidates that week is not listening for grammar. They are listening for a feeling, and Urdu politeness produces a very specific one. The tehzeeb that makes you a pleasure to work with — the deference to seniors, the future left to God, the long face-saving preamble before a "no" — reads in English as uncertainty and distance. When the panel hears "Insha'Allah I will try my level best to handle the team," they are not thinking about theology. They are writing "not sure he can" in the margin.
On accent: it is not an error, and nothing on this page asks you to change how you sound. Panels in the Gulf and the UK hear Pakistani English every day. What moves your score is word choice, verb tense and hedging — and those are exactly the things that are easiest to fix, because they are habits rather than ability.
The seven patterns below are the ones that appear most often when Urdu speakers record interview answers, in the order they cost the most.
1. Insha'Allah as a future tense
In Urdu, ان شاء اللہ is not optional and it is not a hedge. It is simply how a respectful person speaks about anything that has not yet happened — leaving a meeting, finishing a project, getting a job. Dropping it feels arrogant. But an English-speaking interviewer who asks "Can you take this branch to profitability in a year?" and hears "Insha'Allah, I will try my level best" hears a maybe. The same is true of "hopefully", "God willing" said in English, and "I will try" — all of them put the outcome outside your control in a language where the listener expects you to claim it.
The fix is not to promise things you cannot promise. It is to replace the prediction with evidence: what you did before, in the simple past, with a number. Evidence does not need Insha'Allah because it has already happened.
What they hear
“Insha'Allah I will try my level best to bring the branch into profit, and hopefully with the team's support we will achieve the target.”
Say instead
“At Habib Bank I took a loss-making branch in Gulshan to break-even in fourteen months by cutting non-performing loans from 9% to 4%. I'd start the same way here — the loan book first.”
No promise, no hedge, no Insha'Allah. The past-tense fact carries more certainty than any future-tense vow could.
2. "I will be highly obliged" — the petition register
Urdu carries a written-formal register inherited from Persian court language, and Pakistani English preserves it in applications and letters: "I will be highly obliged", "kindly do the needful", "with due respect", "I beg to state", "your good self", "janab". In a letter it is elegant. Spoken aloud in an interview, it turns the conversation into a petition — you asking, them granting. Interviewers outside South Asia find it either quaint or, worse, a sign that you see yourself as junior to the room. They want to picture you as a colleague, and colleagues do not beg to state.
- "I will be highly obliged if you consider me" → simply answer the question; gratitude goes in one sentence at the end.
- "Kindly do the needful" → name the action: "please approve the PO", "I'll send the revised file today."
- "Janab / Sir / Madam" every sentence → their first name if offered, otherwise nothing.
- "With due respect, sir…" before disagreeing → "I see it differently — here's why."
What they hear
“With due respect, sir, I would be highly obliged if you could consider my candidature, as I am very keen to serve your esteemed organisation.”
Say instead
“I'm interested in this role because it's the first one I've seen that puts credit risk and branch operations under one manager — that's the combination I've been building toward.”
3. "Myself Ahmed, I belong to Lahore"
The Urdu self-introduction — میرا نام احمد ہے، میں لاہور سے ہوں، میں نے پنجاب یونیورسٹی سے ماسٹرز کیا — has a fixed order that English-medium schools translate into a fixed English script: "Myself Ahmed Raza. I belong to Lahore. I have done my Masters from Punjab University. I am a hardworking and honest person." Each piece is understood, but "myself" cannot be a subject in standard English, "belong to" means ownership, and "done my Masters from" is a preposition the panel will notice. More importantly the script says nothing about what you do at work, which is the only thing the panel is there to hear.
What they hear
“Myself Ahmed Raza, I belong to Lahore, I have done my MBA from LUMS and I am a hardworking and honest person having six years experience in the banking sector.”
Say instead
“I'm Ahmed. I've spent six years in corporate banking, the last three managing a portfolio of about forty SME clients at Meezan in Lahore, and I'm here because your SME desk is expanding into exactly the sectors I know.”
4. "The same", "the said", "till" — office Urdu-English out loud
Pakistani office English has a set of written-form habits that sound odd when spoken. "The same" as a pronoun — "I have attached the report, kindly review the same" — is fine in a memo and strange in conversation. "The said client", "the above-mentioned", "as per" and "revert" are all in the same family. "Till" is used where English needs "by": "I will submit the report till Friday" means, to a British or Gulf listener, that you will keep submitting it continuously until Friday. And "pass out" for graduate, "cousin brother", "out of station" and "prepone" are Indo-Pakistani vocabulary that simply does not exist for the interviewer.
- "kindly review the same" → "please review it"
- "submit till Friday" → "submit by Friday" (till/until is only for something that continues)
- "the said project" → "that project"
- "I passed out in 2017" → "I graduated in 2017"
- "my cousin brother" → "my cousin"; "out of station" → "away / travelling"
- "please revert" → "please reply"; "prepone" → "bring forward"
What they hear
“I prepared the said proposal and shared the same with the client, and they reverted till the next day with their approval.”
Say instead
“I prepared the proposal and sent it to the client, and they approved it by the next day.”
5. "Since six years" and "I am doing job"
Urdu builds duration with سے and a present-tense verb — میں چھ سال سے یہاں کام کر رہا ہوں — which comes out word-for-word as "I am working here since six years." English needs the present perfect and picks the preposition by whether you name a length (for six years) or a start point (since 2020). A second habit rides along: "I am doing job in a bank" translates نوکری کر رہا ہوں directly. English says "I work at a bank." And states — have, know, understand, want — never take -ing: "I am having experience" is the version panels hear most.
What they hear
“I am doing job in a textile company since six years and I am having complete knowledge of export documentation.”
Say instead
“I've worked at a textile exporter for six years, and I know export documentation end to end — LCs, shipping documents, and SBP compliance.”
6. The long preamble before a "no" or a "yes"
In Urdu, a bare "no" is rude and a bare "yes" is presumptuous. So the answer arrives after a preamble that saves everyone's face: "Sir, actually the thing is, you see, in that situation what happened was…" The interviewer asked "Have you managed people before?" and forty seconds later still does not have the answer. To an English-speaking panel this is not politeness. It is evasion, and it is one of the most common reasons a technically strong Pakistani candidate is scored as "unclear communicator".
Answer first, in one word or one clause. Then give the context. "Yes — a team of four for two years. Here's an example." Or "Not formally, but I've led two projects with people who didn't report to me." Both are polite. Both are direct. The panel can score both.
What they hear
“Sir, actually, you see, in my previous organisation the structure was such that officially there was no team under me as such, but the thing is that in practice the juniors used to come to me for guidance and I used to help them, so in that sense…”
Say instead
“Not formally. But for eighteen months I trained and reviewed the work of three junior officers who reported to my manager, and two of them were promoted in that time.”
7. "Mashallah" and praise-by-reflex
Urdu speakers soften and bless almost everything: ماشاء اللہ for anything good, "very good company", "great opportunity", "your esteemed organisation". An interviewer from outside the culture hears flattery, and flattery in an interview reads as nerves. Praise the company once, specifically — a product, a decision, a number you read — and then move on. Specific praise sounds like research. General praise sounds like a script.
What they hear
“Mashallah your company is very reputed and it is a great opportunity for me to be associated with such an esteemed organisation.”
Say instead
“I noticed you opened three new branches in Sharjah last year, which is the fastest expansion in your segment — that's what made me apply.”
A worked STAR answer
Here is a complete answer to a question that comes up in almost every Gulf and UK interview, written the way it lands well in English. Read it aloud, then read the note on what changed from the Urdu-shaped first draft.
Worked example — “Tell me about a time you had to say no to a senior person.”
- Situation
- Two years ago I was a site engineer on a 14-storey residential tower in Dubai Silicon Oasis. The project manager wanted to pour the fourth-floor slab on a Thursday to hit a milestone before a client visit.
- Task
- The rebar inspection had found spacing issues in two zones that morning, and the fix would take until Saturday. I had to stop a pour that my own manager had already promised the client.
- Action
- I went to him directly instead of emailing. I showed him the inspection photos, told him the two zones that failed and the corrective work needed, and gave him a revised date — Saturday afternoon — with the consultant's inspector already booked. I also offered to explain the delay to the client myself, so he wouldn't have to.
- Result
- He agreed. We poured on Saturday, passed inspection first time, and the client visit went ahead with the slab curing. Afterwards he made rebar sign-off a hard gate on every floor, and he asked me to brief the client on structural progress from then on.
The first draft began "Sir, with due respect, actually the situation was very difficult because the PM sahib is a very senior person and I did not want to disrespect him, but Insha'Allah I tried to convince him…" — a preamble, a hedge, and no facts. It also said "somehow he agreed", which erases the candidate's own work. The final version has numbers (14 storeys, two zones, Saturday), an action the candidate chose (going in person, booking the inspector, offering to face the client), and a result that changed how the site worked.
Three phrases to retire, three to adopt
Retire
Insha'Allah I will try my level best
Courtesy in Urdu, "maybe" in English. Replace the promise with a past-tense fact.
I will be highly obliged / with due respect, sir
Turns the interview into a petition. You are describing your work, not asking a favour.
Actually, sir, the thing is…
The preamble that delays your answer. Answer first, then context.
Adopt
Yes — here's one example.
Direct answer, then a story you control. Polite and scorable in the same breath.
I decided / I told him / I stopped it
Simple past, first person, no softener. Ownership sounds plain in English, not proud.
That brought X from A to B.
The number is what the panel writes down. Build every result sentence around one.
How to practise this in the week before
- Record yourself answering "Have you managed people before?" on your phone. Time how many seconds pass before the panel would have a yes or a no. If it is more than three, that is the preamble.
- Listen again and count every Insha'Allah, hopefully, try my best, sir, actually and the same. Write the number down — it is usually higher than you expect.
- Take your three best work stories and put one number in each result. Say them aloud in under ninety seconds, result first.
- Read your CV and cover letter out loud. Any sentence that sounds like a letter — highly obliged, kindly, the said, revert — gets rewritten in the words you would use to a colleague.
- Practise saying "I decided", "I told my manager", "I stopped the pour" out loud. It will feel blunt. To an English-speaking interviewer it sounds normal.