People feel comfortable with others who are like them.  So, when you are being interviewed by potential clients or employers, you should try to fit in as much as possible–not only by using appropriate acronyms, jargon and technical lingo, but also by matching the other person’s pace and inflection.  

If you are not a native speaker of the language in which you are being interviewed, polish your language skills ahead of time.  Listening to sophisticated television broadcasters during news shows is a good way to get a feel for the parlance.  The vocabulary will also be more professional and the news topics more familiar than with non-news shows. 

In an effort to sound more American and fit in, some expatriates in the US are going so far as to get professional “accent reduction” according to last week’s International Herald Tribune.  Believe it or not, those with particularly heavy accents are even flying to Michigan to attend the Accent Reduction Institute.  This blogger can think of some native Americans who would benefit from some of that training!