VoltInsider

Body Language in an Interview

May 24th, 2010

I didn’t realize how important body language is in an interview until an interesting incident recently. A Volt recruiter contacted me and asked me to meet with a candidate, “Joe”, who had been turned down for eight jobs in a row even though he had very solid technical skills. So, I set up a short meeting with Joe. When Joe arrived at my office I immediately knew something was wrong. I started a mock interview with Joe and after talking to him for a just a few minutes I stopped the mock interview. Joe was sitting in a somewhat slouched position, not making any eye contact at all, and was speaking with a timid voice. It may not sound like much to you as you read this but the effect on me was huge. If I had been a real interviewer I would have written Joe off as a serious candidate within the first 15 seconds of the interview, and never given him a real chance to reveal his technical skills which were quite good. Anyway, I didn’t pull any punches and let Joe know he had some of the worst body language I’d ever seen and described exactly what he was doing. As it turns out, I’ll bet everybody who knew Joe noticed his poor body language (at least subconsciously) but nobody had ever told him for fear of hurting his feelings. I gave Joe some quick coaching on posture, hand-shake, eye contact, voice tone and modulation, and so on. The improvement was absolutely remarkable. The happy ending to this story is that the recruiter who had contacted me had, unbeknownst to me, scheduled Joe for another interview at Microsoft the next morning. That afternoon Joe called me on the phone and told me he had received a job offer. The moral is that body language is hugely important. Practice mock interviews with someone you know and tell them to critique your body language harshly if necessary, and without worrying about hurting your feelings.

Entry Filed under: Interviewing