Student Job Link's Resources

Do you remember when you were younger and your mother used to yell at you to stop slouching and sit up straight?  Well, whether she knew it or not, she was actually preparing you for job interviews. 

Body language is a key way in which people make judgments about other people.  Yes, the idea of judging somebody solely on their appearance without getting to now them is poor social etiquette, but it happens nevertheless. 

The human brain has been trained over millennia to quickly assess whether or not some person or some thing is a threat based on visual appearance.  If you’re alone in a dark alley and you see a hulking 7-foot-tall bodybuilder with a skull tattooed on his forehead walking towards you, you’ll probably be a bit more frightened than if that person was a five-foot-five skinny guy with a pocket protector. 

It doesn’t matter what that person is actually like, that’s the way you will perceive it.

So how do you adjust your body language so that you can portray the power and confidence that will help you get hired?  TV and movies - this strategy is a double-win because if anybody yells at you for watching TV instead of looking for a job, you can say that you’re doing research!  

So, pick a movie or a TV show that has a particularly strong and confident man or woman in it.  Notice how that person holds their shoulders.  Are they hunched or square?  Does that person look another person in the eye when they are talking, or do they demure and look down?  

One of the reasons that you think that character is confident and important is because you are picking up on body language cues that the actor or actress is using.  If you can use these cues yourself, then you’ve got a leg up on the competition.  Just make sure not to overdo it.  You want to seem like a confident person, not someone doing a bad impression of a cliff face.

More Resources:

Body Language: http://changingminds.org/techniques/body/body_language.htm
Body Language In Interviews:  http://www.selfgrowth.com/articles/Marwijk1.html