You can do the manager job. The question is whether you sound like one.

You have been doing the work for three years. You mentor the juniors. You unblock other teams. Your last review said "ready for next level." The manager role opened up. You applied. Now there is a panel interview in two weeks, and the panel is in English.

You are not worried about the technical side. The work is in your head. You are worried about the parts that can't be prepared from a script. The questions about how you'd handle a difficult report. The questions about a project that went wrong and what you'd do differently. The follow-up questions that come from your answers, the ones nobody can predict.

Manager interviews are different from individual contributor interviews. They are mostly conversation. They test whether you can think on your feet, push back on a hypothetical, hold a position when challenged. The bar is not technical correctness. The bar is sounding like someone the panel would put in charge of a team.

This part is hard in any language. It's harder when English isn't your first one and the panel is moving at native speed.

You have probably already tried the obvious things. Read books on manager interviews. Watched English YouTube on leadership communication. Maybe used an AI tool to practise responses. None of it was wasted. None of it fixed the panel-interview problem.

The reason: a panel interview is real-time conversation between humans, not a list of questions and answers. The panel interrupts you. They ask follow-up questions you didn't predict. They go silent and watch what you do with the silence. You can't train that with a course. You can only train it by speaking to real people, regularly, until the words come without thinking.

That is what we are building.

It's two weeks before the panel. You have an hour after work each evening. You log in to Cambiyo with a list of common manager-interview questions in front of you. Sarah is online. You ask her to play the hiring manager. The first question is "tell me about a time you led a team through a difficult change." You answer. She follows up. Your first answer is rough. By the third evening of doing this, the answers come out without sounding rehearsed.

It's the weekend before the panel. You want to practise the harder questions — the ones about conflict, about firing someone, about disagreeing with a senior leader. Jake is online. You spend an hour on these specifically. He pushes back on a few of your answers, the way a real interviewer would. You adjust. The next answer is sharper.

It's the morning of the interview. You don't need more mock questions. You need to be in English mode, calm, with your speaking speed already moving. Claire is online. You spend 25 minutes just talking with her about anything — her week, your week, a film. The point is to walk into the interview already in English, not switching from your native language for the first time that day.

The panel goes well. The follow-up questions you used to dread come up, and you answer them clearly. Two weeks later, the offer comes through.

You stop being held back by something you can fix.