Vocal Tonality: The Hidden Secret Behind Successful Corporate Interviews
This article is written by Hassan Akram, the Managing Director of City Careers Coach. He is an ex-investment banking recruiter, corporate law, private equity and venture capital recruiter. He has interviewed 1,000+ professionals from tier-1 firms. This includes elite bulge bracket investment banks, such as Goldman Sachs; top corporate law firms, such as Kirkland & Ellis; and prestigious private equity firms such as KKR. Want to secure a top corporate career with our world-leading career development programmes? Please book here:
This article is for international students applying for elite, front office careers. These include investment banking, corporate law, private equity, venture capital, and strategy consulting (MBB).
The old adage of ‘it’s not what you say, but how you say it’ is definitely true. It’s especially true in an interview scenario for an elite corporate career, such as corporate law or investment banking. You have at most 60-minutes to demonstrate your passion, interest, and engagement.
This is both verbally and non-verbally. After all, why would the hiring manager invest hundreds of thousands of pounds in training and developing someone who doesn’t inspire confidence? This is the case even if you have spent 100s of hours in preparation. (Yes. It really is that cut-throat!)
People fail interviews from all backgrounds. We’ve personally failed interviewers from elite world universities, including Harvard, Oxford and MIT. We’ve also rejected candidates from the most elite careers in venture capital, corporate law, and investment banking. Why? They just didn’t come across strongly enough in the process. What gave that impression? Their vocal tone
These careers are the most elite, competitive, and prestigious internationally. They want the top 0.1% of talent internationally. How do we know? We’ve hired them.
This article will look at vocal tonality and how you can use this effectively in interviews.
What even is vocal tonality?
It means how you sound when you speak. Do you sound engaged? Do you sound motivated? Do you sound — and hopefully appear — driven? These are all vital points to leave a resoundingly strong impression on us as interviewers.
With this in mind, sounding and being unwaveringly engaged is absolutely critical for interviews in elite corporate careers such as investment banking, corporate law, and private equity. They want to hire the best and those who inspire confidence.** We’ve interviewed 1,000 + candidates in such elite careers. The candidates who have demonstrated this have been consistently successful. This is irrespective of salary level, position or, years of prior experience.
*Some elite corporate firms blacklist candidates from future applications if they fail at interview stage. (Yes, really.)
**Interviewers often interview multiple candidates per day. The ones most memorable are those that are engaged and passionate.
So, what makes up vocal tone?
· Pitch — The highness and lowness of your voice. In an interview, are we strategically and subtly tweaking this?
· Rate — The speed at which you say speak. Are we speaking relatively slow in large parts of the interview? This could be something that builds your professional presence, gravitas, and allows you to demonstrate your naturally considered demeanour
· Volume — The loudness or softness of your voice. Are we speaking relatively loudly, but not overbearingly?
· Inflections — Change in pitch or tone. Are we emphasising certain words where needed? Are we dropping our inflection at the end of each sentence to bolster our executive presence and authority?
· Tempo — The consistency of your speech. Are we speaking at a consistent, smooth, and even pace? Are we more legato rather than staccato? (This is for the music lovers out there!)
· Vocal Variety — Change in rate, pitch, and volume that creates vocal variety and expressiveness. Are we changing how we speak to show our character and enthusiasm? Are we — in short — avoiding sounding robotic, monotone and mechanical?
When the above are followed, an exceptional interview performance is most likely the outcome. The top 10% of candidates who pass interview stage at elite firms, such as McKinsey, show this.* Likewise, as someone who was an ex-legal recruiter, dealing with placing senior lawyers in strategic positions, this was a key variable. One client rejected a candidate at the final stage as she quickly simply appeared to not ‘want the role enough’ from the tone of her voice at interview.
Passion and enthusiasm
Varying vocal tonality to show passion and enthusiasm provides an emotional impact on the interviewer alongside the logical impact through — hopefully! — the actual content of your answers. This emotional aspect of elite corporate careers, is actually very important. Remember, recruitment staff are human too!
*McKinsey also has multiple rounds of case studies in some of its assessments. Assessors look for many things here as key performance indicators, including business acumen, analytical thinking and strong verbal delivery. Are they certain in their comments? Are their comments fused with enthusiasm? Are their responses to challenging feedback appropriate and receptive?
Recruiting Case Study
One of our freelance recruiters was interviewing prospective applicants for his law firm’s internship programme. His firm was a prestigious internationally recognised corporate law firm that specialised in M&A.
He shortlisted a stellar candidate for interview. This candidate read History at a prestigious world-leading university in America. He played hockey at state level. And he had his own start-up business. On paper, he was an excellent — and very hireable — potential recruit.
In the interview, whilst his responses were good, the delivery — whilst well structured — was not. He gave perfect answers to the key questions we asked. These included: ‘why commercial law?’, ‘why our firm?’ and ‘what’s the most interesting thing about you?’. But he just didn’t sound engaged or passionate. His delivery was flat and monotone. It was almost as if he memorised his responses from a script.
At the end of the interview, we decided to reject him. This was a very tough decision for us — especially as his answers on a technical level were correct. For instance, he gave a fantastic and creative response on the inorganic methods in which a company could pursue growth.
But, he just didn’t seem to have passion for the role. And — as much technical prowess is important — it’s not everything.
Vocal tone is key in all aspects of an interview process
Likewise, vocal tone for technical interviews is important. This may sound surprising. As assessors, we focussed on these points heavily in feedback forms. Were candidates actually enjoying the technical questions on IPOs and the three main financial statements? Did they enjoy discussing the different ways a transaction can be structured from a legal perspective, for instance, a share versus an asset sale?
Vocal tone is a barometer for how likely you want and intend to stay in this career. A recruiter we know rejected a candidate for giving a very good answer on a leveraged buy-out, but sounding robotic and bored whilst giving it…
A recruiter we know rejected a candidate for giving a very good answer on a leveraged buy-out, but sounding robotic and bored whilst giving it…
In short, content alone will never lead to a successful interview outcome.*
This is irrespective of salary level, whether from a role offering £50,000 as a starting salary, to one offering £1.2 million. We know this as ex-recruiters. We have seen both.*
A Key Hack For Exuding Strong Vocal Tonality
Smiling is the most underrated thing to increase your interview performance. It has a clearly noticeable audible effect on speech and how you sound. It helps you — as an interviewee — sound engaged, pleasant and motivated. Through having a happy and positive disposition, it suggests that you’re actually enjoying the interview process.
Smiling affects how we speak to such an extent that listeners in one study could identify sixteen different kinds of smiles based on sound alone.
I’ll let you into a secret. We’ve often passed interviewees who delivered substandard interview responses. But smiled, spoke enthusiastically, and were engaging.
After all, only 10 per cent of communication comprises of the words we use in verbal communication. The rest is split between vocal tonality and body language.
Smiling is the magic formula which increases vocal tonality drastically.
Things That Damage Interview Performance
Non-Verbal Vocalisations
Among the many things that damage your vocal tone, non-verbal vocalisations are perhaps the strongest. These are utterances such as ‘erm, ahh, hmm’.
These are weak statements. They don’t create impact. They don’t inspire confidence.
Worst of all (us recruiters are a cynical bunch) it may suggest to us that you’re not confident or — worse — underprepared.* After all, if you’re truly passionate about something, you would likely speak about it fluently, at length, and confidently. Personally, I’m a huge cricket, boxing, and football fan. Would I ever falter speaking about X. Probably not. I’m just very passionate about these sports, and sport in general. Likewise, this passion should hopefully come through in your interview responses for say a training contract interview at Freshfields or a venture capital interview at Sequoia. As such, these ‘structural weaknesses’ as we call them internally, are to be avoided.
*If you do suffer from social anxiety or other associated issues, please flag these outright before your interview. The assessor will likely be sympathetic and factor this in when reviewing your responses.
Furthermore, these non-verbal vocalisations are likely to detract from the quality of your answers. This is through these utterances often causing an upward inflection. (This is when your tone of voice goes high-pitched at the end of a word or statement.) Upward inflections often lead to an uncertain tone. Sounding uncertain at interview in an elite corporate career is not what we want!
In short, eliminate these.
How could you fix problems in this area?
Speak slower. It will likely allow you to foresee any such pivots into ‘hmming’ and ‘erming’. It really works!
Conclusion
To sum up, the purpose of an interview is to inspire confidence in the interviewer. It’s about telling the interviewer that as a future hire, you are a safe, diligent, and enthusiastic pair of hands.
Once you master vocal tonality, you’re well on your way to excelling.