Emotional Body Language in a Job Interview
July 23rd, 2010 | 
Author: 
Emotional Body Language in a Job Interview
Research on emotional body language is rapidly emerging as a new field in cognitive and affective neuroscience. This article reviews how whole-body signals are automatically perceived an understood, and their role in emotional communication and decision-making in a job interview
www.BodyLanguageaCards.com
More than 90% of the job interview is conveyed by non-verbal means. You did all the homework for your interview. You know everything about the company, their vision, management style, what skills you have that would benefit this company, and where you expect your career to be in 10 years. Briefly you know all the correct answers to 249 interview questions, but at the end of the day what really counts is the main question: did you have good chemistry? Can they trust your message, and what you can do in order to make sure that they will?
We polish our verbal skills for an interview, but few of us give much consideration to their non verbal communication and body language skills that support the verbal messages and can make the deferent.
Up-to-date research has proven that the large majority of messages are received in varying levels of effectiveness. The impact you make on others depends on what you say (7%), how you say it (38%), and by your body language (55%).
Faces belong to bodies
According to article in NATURE REVIEWS NEUROSCIENCE 06
From our encounters with others, we are just as familiar with emotional body language as with facial expressions. Emotional body language is perceived as a means of influencing others, for which social psychologists have provided detailed descriptions. During the past few decades, some isolated psychological studies have appeared5,27, but neuroscientific experiments on how humans perceive bodies have been reported only recently. A challenging question in the wake of the long-standing debate about whether the brain is functionally specialized to process faces is whether there is also an area in the brain that is specifically activated by seeing body movement or posture. Are we as expert at interpreting body language as we are faces? There are areas in our brain that respond to facial stimuli, but is there a corresponding area in the brain that is dedicated to bodies? Are the same areas involved in perceiving facial expressions and Emotional body language? Are consciousness and attention resources needed for processing bodies and recognizing body movement and posture? Some of these questions can already be answered.
We can read other thoughts like open cards. The thoughts in our minds transfer into feeling that get an emotional expressions that our body pronounces in thousand of gestures, postures, and expressions.
The human body can produce over 700,000 unique movements. These movements have been partitioned into about 60 discrete and symbolic signals and around 60 gestures, postures, and expressions.
Body language can be used to improve your negotiation skills, your presentation ability, and in different social interactions, including a job interview.
Reading body language is a valuable key at a job interview, it gives you more tools than you could have. To succeed over other confronts you must be attentive to what silent body gestures you are giving off, you also need to be aware of the interviewer’s body language.
When we think about the ways in which cultures differ in job interview, we usually use the iceberg analogy. The aspects of culture that are immediately apparent, like food, language, customs and manners, are above the surface. Those aspects of culture that are more hidden, that we are less consciously aware of, are below the surface. They include:
1. Communication style.
2. Interpersonal relations.
3. Attitude toward authority.
4. Orientation towards time.
5. Attitude towards space.
6. Thinking style.
7. Tolerance for ambiguity and uncertainty.
8. Orientation to the environment.
9. Values, beliefs and basic assumptions.
If it is a natural form of communication, why do I need to learn it?
Only a small percentage of the population perceive the non-verbal signs at the conscious level and can use body language as a tool to “read” others and to present themselves and their messages in a reliable way. These people can create empathy, detect lies within seconds, and feel immediately when it’s the right time to close a deal. Others can learn it; many politicians practice body language techniques and use personal training for these purposes. Similarly, police and security experts are trained to understand body language as a tool to detect lies. In the corporate world, body language interpretation is a key tool in the interview and hiring process of new employees. Some companies even have a body language expert present during interviews and as part of a negotiation team for large-scale deals.
How to start? Entering with long strides
Go to the interview and imagine that you already got the job before the interview even begins. Positives thoughts transmitted by your body into positive gestures.
The interview starts the moment you step into the room. Walk in tall, with a smile on your face. Make sure your hands are free and offer it to the interviewer. Make the handshake strong and firm, pumping hands once or twice, then releasing.
Entering with long strides characterizes a person with long-term goals and the willingness to take risks.
Remember that we never get a second chance to make the first impression.
Keep on open body – “I have nothing to hide”.
Straight, open hands forming one line with arm, shows honesty and openness.
Keep open body posture and appropriate eye contact. Seat yourself at a reasonable distance from the other person.
Most of the people find it too hard to lie while their hands are open. This message is most important as a first impression.
Eye contact
• “The eyes are often called, ‘the windows of the soul’ as they can send many different non-verbal signals.
• Eye contact often increases significantly when we are listening, and especially when we are paying close attention to what the other person is saying.
• Less eye contact is used when talking, particularly by people who are visual thinkers as they stare into the distance or upwards as they ’see’ what they are talking about.
• Locked ankles
When a person makes very little eye contact, they may be feeling insecure. They may also be lying and not want to be detected; it also could be as a result of coulter behavior.
Smile
A good smile has the power to say, “I’m a happy, confident person and I’d love to work here”. Practice a smile that puts people at ease. It’s just as much your responsibility to ensure that there is a relaxed atmosphere during the interview.
Where would you like me to sit?”
Wait for the interviewer to direct you to a seat. You can ask the interviewer, “Where would you like me to sit?”
Try to avoid locking your ankles even if they are hidden from the eyes of the interviewer. It’s a blocking and negative gesture that affects your state of mind.
As a rule it is difficult for most people to control their legs since they are far from the head. This is even difficult for those people who are extremely aware of body language.
Don’t forget, people want to feel special. They want to feel as though you are speaking to them directly or that they are the most important person in the room during your conversation.
Why cards?
Mastering the secrets of the body language might be complicated. Body language is a visual mode of communication- you cannot learn it just from reading- you need to see it. Body Language Cards do just that; they flood your consciousness with the visual gestures and connect it to its meaning.
Most important: It works!!!
Body Language Cards are used as an integral part for professional body language courses; they are practiced as an educational devise in corporations; Body Language Cards are even used in psychology courses in colleges all over the world as they were recently translated in 4 additional languages.
You can learn more in www.bodylanguagecards.com
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- What is Body Language? “The body never lies and the body never keeps...
- Reading Body Language and Improving Your Game Reading body language messages are easy to spot if...
- Lying Body Language – How to Read the Body Language of Liars In conversations, especially in serious ones, you can’t help...
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@LadyMeridon me 2:(
I LIKE THIS SONG SO MUCH
@naty670 Me too
shoulders sort of hunched
eyes on the floor
uptight and tense
lips pressed together
http://changingminds.org/techniques/body/body_language.htm is this the kind of thing u mean? good luck
@LadyMeridon i bet he still does jst ve has 2 make songs that will apeal 2 da new generation lik im 13 so i lik go 2 discos n u need dis type of song 2 listen 2 instead of his old 1 aldou i love dem 2
i kept listening to this
rubbing hands with glee,
rubbing hands nervously
eyes wide with horror
etc, i could add a few hundred
his accent when he speaks french is hot.. as a french girl, i think that every american huy speaking french is hot
Sometimes guys get so hung up on themselves they think every signal is a come on. Where not all like that though.
I was looking at stuff like this for a buddy today and found this which is a bit of an eye opener. See the link below – they're good tips!
Hope it helps.
definitely the relaxed and open body language shows a willingness or want for him to interact with you. and one more thing: the leaning back and spreading his knees wide… supposedly that's supposed to be a body language thing that men do to show their confidence and sexuality. one other thing they do to show sexuality is put their hands in their beltloops or near their groin area. i don't know if it's all totally true, but that's what i've read. good luck!
@globin3 i speak french
i like that ((:
It's not body language, it's emotional hints and persuasive looks. He probably uses that to give you a hint that he likes you and wonders if you like him back.
@LadyMeridon its just a song hun and beside he’s a boy !:D
If he's interested, he'll make eye contact. If he smiles that's a green light for you say "hi". If he's looking at his shoes when he passes you or if he suddenly starts looking at his watch or what he's holding in his hands then he's not the one for you.
i dont understrand, but i guess so
Almost none.
I took 7 communications seminars in 10 years at a previous job. They would send me, and then have me come back and teach the material to other people. All of the seminars dealt with body language at some point, and 2 of them dealt with it almost exclusively.
Here are the statistics I was handed. In a face-to-face conversation, only 10% of the communication is actually verbal. That only includes the actual words which are said, as tone of voice counts as non-verbal communication. Of the 90% which is non-verbal, approximately 5-10% is tone of voice and "hand talking", or hand gestures. The rest is all body language.
There are some things which are conveyed in the face, but most body language relies on other things which cannot be seen on a web cam. Those include things like body position, what you are doing with your limbs, how close or far you are standing from the person, and how your body position changes during your speaking phases and listening phases.
Some people are tremendously adept at manipulating their faces to seem appropriate to the conversation, but the eyes usually hold the key. For instance, you can generally tell how a person processes information by where they look when they think about how to answer a question. A person who looks up, over your shoulder or head, on either side, tends to process information in a very verbal, left-brained sort of way. A person who looks down, on either side, tends to process in a more creative, less-linear, right-brained sort of way. A person who has established which way they tend to look, and has done it repeatedly, and then breaks with that, is usually giving an answer which is not 100% truthful. Similarly, genuine emotion shows in the muscles around the eyes, with a specific muscular configuration for amusement, another for sadness, etc…
Web cams throw all that out the window, because people generally look right into the webcam when they speak, and you don't have the advantage of seeing how they process, or seeing the genuine emotion around the eyes. Most of that stuff happens in a flash, anyway, and then is gone, so any pause in the conversation makes it impossible to catch it.
What they are doing with the rest of their body is actually even more important than what they are doing with their face. The reason for that is that while people regain control of their face quite quickly, they tend to not even know what they are doing with the rest of their body. They are completely clueless, unless they have schooled themselves to control that stuff, and even then, it's very hard to control. Basically, the face shows a response for something like 1-3 seconds, but the body holds the response for much longer, and that can be as long as minutes.
You cannot see bodies at all, or if you do, you see someone sitting in their chair, maybe messing with their keyboard or the things on their desk. You don't get to see any of the "telegraphing" that goes on, so I would say the percentage is actually quite a bit lower than your guess of 60%. I would say it could be as low as 10%.
And one other thing we learned was interesting. Experts in non-verbal communication and body language do check the face, but they use the face to see if it matches what the body is doing. If it does not, then there is good reason to believe a person is hiding something. When people are serious about reading body language, they want to see the whole body if at all possible, because that gives the truest reading.
I always laugh at those tabloid magazines where they have a body language expert tell you how a relationship is going by how two people are relating to one another. Half the time, the photos are only partial photos, and you cannot really read those
Once I took those classes, I put what I learned into practice. My results, from honing my skills (which are a bit rusty right now, as I no longer come in contact with hundreds of people each day), would seem to indicate that those statistics are accurate. I no longer even bother reading faces except for the first few minutes of meeting someone new, to ascertain a few things about them. Other than that, I tend to read body language almost exclusively. And I do pretty well…
So that's what I think: about 10%, not counting the actual words they say.