How to Stop Saying "Um" and "Like" in Interviews

You prepared your answer. You know the story cold. But when you play back the recording, it’s “um, so, like, basically, I guess I kind of led the project.” The content was fine. The delivery made it sound like you weren’t sure.

Filler words — um, uh, like, you know, basically, actually — are the single most common thing that makes a good interview answer sound weak. The good news: they’re a habit, and habits respond to practice.

Why filler words happen

Fillers aren’t a sign you’re unprepared. They’re what your mouth does while your brain catches up. You start a sentence before you’ve decided how it ends, hit a gap, and fill the silence with a sound instead of a pause.

That’s the key insight: a filler is a pause you were afraid to take. The fix isn’t to talk faster or memorize a script. It’s to get comfortable with short silences.

Four things that actually work

1. Let yourself pause. A one-second silence feels like an eternity to you and is invisible to the interviewer. When you feel an “um” coming, close your mouth instead. A clean pause reads as thoughtful. An “um” reads as unsure. Same gap, opposite impression.

2. Slow your open. Most fillers cluster in the first few seconds of an answer, when you’re still deciding where to go. Buy that time deliberately: “That’s a good example of…” — a slow, deliberate first sentence gives your brain room so the rest comes out clean.

3. Shorten your sentences. Long, winding sentences have more places to get lost, and every lost moment is a filler waiting to happen. Make one point, stop, make the next. Full stops are where fillers go to die.

4. Count them — then re-record. You can’t fix what you don’t measure. Record an answer, count the fillers, then record it again trying to replace each one with a pause. Two or three passes and the drop is dramatic. This is the whole game: hear yourself, then do it again.

The one mistake to avoid

Don’t try to eliminate fillers by scripting every word and reciting it. Memorized answers have their own tell — they sound flat and fall apart the second the interviewer asks a follow-up you didn’t rehearse. The goal isn’t a perfect recording. It’s to think out loud cleanly, so that when a real question comes at an angle you didn’t expect, you can pause, gather, and answer without the “ums” creeping back in.

That only comes from reps — actually saying answers out loud and hearing where they wobble, not reading them silently and assuming they’ll come out right.