Come-to-work eyes
Tap into your interviewer’s subconscious and you won’t have to worry
about what comes out of your mouth, says Michael Bond
ONE thing you can be sure of when you
walk into an interview is that you’re not
there to be tested on what you know.
The people sitting in front of you are already
aware that when it comes to technical skills
and qualifications, you tick all the boxes. What
they’re dying to find out is what you’re like as
a person – whether you’ll fit in, whether they
can trust you, how you’re likely to behave at
the office party. From now on, it’s all about
chemistry – or, more accurately, psychology.
So how do you give yourself the best chance
of success? The most common piece of advice
you’ll get is to “be yourself”. Forget that, it’ll
only help if you’re the chief executive’s cousin.
A better strategy is to exploit the psychological
shortcuts that interviewers unconsciously use
when deciding whether or not they like
someone – cues such as eye contact and body
language. We all use them when meeting
someone for the first time, and research shows
that interviewers rely on these more than
rational analysis when assessing a candidate.
We’re not advocating wholesale deception,
just a bit of fine-tuning to help pitch things in
your favour...
First impressions count
When we meet someone for the first time,
we make our minds up about various aspects
of their personality almost instantaneously.
We can’t help ourselves. Janine Willis and
Alexander Todorov at Princeton University
found that showing people an unfamiliar face
for just one-tenth of a second is long enough
for them to form judgements about the
person’s attractiveness, likeability,
trustworthiness, competence and
aggressiveness. Having more time to
deliberate doesn’t change our opinions,
it only increases our confidence in them
( Psychological Science, vol 17, p 592).
No doubt there are good evolutionary
reasons for this, though it’s not clear how
accurate such snap judgements are.
6 | NewScientist | 24 October 2009
Unfortunately, your interviewer is as likely to
jump to quick conclusions as the rest of us. So
although it may seem obvious, be sure to walk
into that room looking upbeat and friendly.
And it’s best to keep it up, at least for half a
minute. Tricia Prickett, while at the University
of Toledo in Ohio, found that untrained
observers who watched a video of the first
20 to 30 seconds of a job interview were
astonishingly accurate at predicting whether
the applicant would be offered the job. That
doesn’t mean the observers were especially
good at picking good candidates. It means
the interviewers, despite being fully trained,
still go with their initial gut instinct.
Can we change an interviewer’s first
impression? That’s difficult, but not
impossible, says Frank Bernieri , who studies
personality perception at Oregon State
University in Corvallis. Though it’s easier
to dislodge a positive impression than a
negative one, he says. “Socially undesirable
information, such as picking your nose or
farting, tends to be weighted more
in our assessments. What this
means is that good
impressions are always at
risk of being trashed at
any moment.”
DO be prepared to turn on the charm
right from the start
DON’T pick your nose. Bad first impressions
are even harder to dislodge than bogies
Look fabulous
Attractive people make more money and
go further in their careers because we are all
biased towards beauty – unfortunate but true.
This was shown by V. Bhaskar at University
College London in a study of a Dutch TV show
in which the highest-scoring player at the
end of a round chooses which competitor to
eliminate. He found that the least attractive
players were twice as likely to be eliminated ,
despite scoring no worse than the others.
One reason for this is what’s known as the
halo effect: people assume that someone who
scores highly in one character trait also scores
highly in others. Social psychologist Richard
Nisbett demonstrated that the thought
process behind the halo effect is almost
entirely subconscious ( Journal of Personality
and Social Psychology, vol 35, p 250). Use this
to your advantage: most interviewers are
mugs just like everyone else when it comes
to the subtleties of social psychology.
FANCY/VEER
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