How to exude confidence during job interviews

 

Posture speaks volumes about ones confidence during an interview. PHOTO | FOTOSEARCH 

By SCOTT BELLOWS

In Summary

• Adopting the right sitting posture and speech tone and volume are invaluable skills.

Nyavula sat confidently in the waiting room on the day of her job interview. She discovered her power colour and wore it proudly as part of her outfit.

The head of the firm’s human resources came out of the board room, greeted Nyavula, and brought her inside and showed her where to sit at the large conference table.

Across the table from Nyavula sat seven smartly dressed men and women who all served as executives of the firm. She felt nervous as she looked at the interviewers. Her once brimming confidence slipped and she started to slouch in her chair.

Nyavula then remembered the advice from prior weeks of Business Talk columns that highlighted research regarding the importance of posture, clothing, facial expressions and other nonverbal gestures comprising up to 55 per cent of effective communication.

Show humility

In order to maximise her effectiveness, Nyavula should not slouch or lean forward with her shoulders hunched.

When going for interviews or other important meetings, both men and women should make their body posture look as large and open as possible.

Sit with your shoulders back instead of forward. Sit with your back straight and not curved forward. Psychologically broad posture makes observers remember you as more confident and capable.

As part of a broad posture, do not sit with your arms straight down at your sides. Such positioning makes you look smaller.

Women especially may feel tempted to show humility in a job interview and resort to meek body poses. Meek posture includes slouching, head held down, and arms at the side.

Meek positions make you look physically smaller in interviewers’ minds, less poised, less aggressive to accomplish future job tasks, and less self-assured. However, everyone, including women, must show wide body positioning.

If you desire to lean forward in your chair, then you must do so accompanied by also placing your elbows on the table. However, do not put your elbows near each other. Reach out and put your elbows as far left and as far right respectively as you possibly can.

You want to increase your visible body frame in the same fashion as in the animal kingdom whereby a creature in the Maasai Mara increases their portrayed body frame when in the view of a predator.

Collect your thoughts

Then, do not hold your neck downwards, but rather keep your neck and head up. If you ever need to pause for a moment to collect your thoughts, you can take a two or three second break by engaging in a power pose.

You can either remove your glasses if you have them but keep them held in your hand near your face. You may notice BBC anchors utilising such power poses during interviews.

Alternatively, you may lean in an opposite direction in your chair such that you lean back in your chair or more forward then make a fist with your hand and place your fist against your chin as if you are deep in thought.

The most effective power pose originating from research out of Harvard University suggests that while your elbows are widely apart on the table, raise your arms and touch just the tips of your fingers together while not putting your palms together.

Then hold that pose with your hands placed just below the level of your chin and look directly at your interviewers. The position stuns interviewers as a strong display of confidence and ability no matter what you are saying at the time.

While incorporating power poses and talking using hand gestures, do not ever bend your wrists. Keep your wrists straight and locked. If you want to point in a direction, point with your whole arm.

Psychologically lost

Do not point with a bent wrist. Bent wrists imply femininity psychologically. Unfortunately, femininity is viewed as a weakness psychologically in terms of confidence and competence.

Career coaches in Kenya help executives maximise the use of powerful hand gestures.

The next 38 per cent of communication comes from your vocal basics including your tone and volume. So when speaking in an interview, always ensure that your interviewers can hear you.

If at any point an interviewer asks you to repeat yourself because they cannot hear you, then you have already psychologically lost your interview battle.

So when you speak, carefully balance your tone as confident, loud enough for everyone to hear you, but not so assertive that you sound arrogant.

Practice your interview speaking styles with a combined group of three or more friends. Listen to their feedback and make adjustments.

Interview panel

Only after mastering the nonverbal communication techniques, should Nyavula then start to focus on exactly how to answer the interview questions. The chair of her interview panel introduced himself and requested her to “tell us a little bit about yourself”.

Her instinct kicked in and she felt tempted to regurgitate easy facts about herself. Most interview candidates fall back to such easy territory: “My name is Nyavula. I grew up in Diani. I worked for three years as a branch manager, two years as an accounts officer, and I graduated from Moi University

Everything Nyavula said gave the interview panel no new information that they did not already know from previously reading her CV and cover letter. A job candidate should instead desire to impact the psychology of their interview panel.

Research shows that if you can help your interviewers to envision a preferred future for what you can do for them, then that stands as far more powerful than regurgitating facts from your CV regarding what you did in the past. Let them see the dream of a better future by you working with the company.

Give a forward looking view of how you will make their lives better.

So instead Nyavula should have said something to the effect of: “I am a proven leader. I get things done. I see myself adding tremendous value to your Kitale branch by increasing client satisfaction by 40 per cent in the first year.

My confidence does not mean that I always know what to do on my own, so I also intend to do a great deal of listening to all of you as well as members of my prospective team before I make decisions.

I value hard work and innovation. Here is how my prior experience enables me to meet and then exceed your expectations…..”

Professor Scott serves as the Director of the New Economy Venture Accelerator (NEVA) at USIU’s Chandaria School of Business, www.ScottProfessor.com, and may be reached on: info@scottprofessor.com or follow on Twitter: @ScottProfessor .