First Impressions- Body Language

Hello, everyone, and welcome to our fourth module.

Are you getting ready for your first job interview, or your fifth?

Do you need to interview new employees for your company?

Do you want to make a good impression on a future employer or employee?

This module on keys to a strong interview, will help you with all of these situations.

Over the next three lessons, you will focus on improving personal skills, pronunciation for -ed and -s endings, and key language that produce successful interviews.

So let’s start with our fist lesson on getting ready for the interview.

Whether you are conducting your interview or being interviewed, you want to be prepared.

And because interviews are all about making a great first impression, your body language, which includes all of the non-verbal ways we communicate, should be your first focus and our focus for this lesson.

So how can you use your body language to make that great first impression?

As we discussed and practiced in module one, our body language communicates a lot about us, even more than what we actually say.

Before we even say one word our body language sends lots of messages to the people we’re with.

And in an interview, we want to be very sure that the first impressions we give are positive.

And because we’re talking about interviews in English, rather than your local language, you might find that the situation be more challenging because body language varies from culture to culture, and place to place.

But it’s not that difficult to avoid mistakes or misunderstandings if you prepare.

How can you prepare when it comes to body language?

First, always be aware of your body language.

Your posture, facial expressions, hand gestures and tone of voice.

Look at pictures of yourself in different situations.

Practice talking about yourself in front of a mirror, or even better, practice it in a real situation and film yourself.

Does your body language show your best side?

In North America, standing or sitting tall, smiling, using hands expressively and politely and keeping a positive tone of voice all contribute to making a strong and lasting impression.

Would that be considered positive body language for you?

Think about body language that might be specific to your own culture, and decide if it’s appropriate in others.

Do a little research to find out.

What else can you do to be sure your body language is helping and not hurting you?

One solution is to observe the people at the interview and mirror or copy their body language.

This is something we do naturally in everyday situations.

Think about what you do when someone smiles at you.

You smile back.

This natural mirroring brings us closer to people and helps us make connections with others.

It’s the same in an interview.

I want to discuss another aspect of body language in this lesson.

How our body language affects how we feel about ourselves and how we can build confidence through better body language.

In her now very famous TED talk, social psychologist, Amy Cuddy of Harvard University, talked about the question she wanted to answer with her research.

Can you change how you feel about yourself through your body language?

Can your body change your mind?

Her answer?

Yes to both.

According to Cuddy, the research was very simple.

She asked people to practice two different types of body poses, open and powerful, or closed and powerless.

They practiced for only two minutes.

Then, those same people were filmed in a job interview situation.

Finally, other people looked at the films and decided who they would hire for a job.

Every person who they picked had practiced a high-power pose before they filmed the interview In the resource materials for this lesson, you’ll find more information about Amy Cuddy and her famous talk.

I encourage you to practice our recommendation, particularly power posing.

See if it can help you achieve a positive personal presence.

It’s time to review.

In this lesson, we discussed how to get ready for an interview by reflecting on our body language, or all of the other non-verbal ways we communicate.

We talked about positive body language for job interviews, the effectiveness of mirroring, and how our body language actually plays a role in how we think about ourselves.

As you work through this module, keep in mind that positive, productive, nonverbal communication is the first step in a successful interview.