Nonverbal Messages
It bears repeating: People begin to form impressions of you as soon as you walk through the door for an interview. From the first messages communicated by your appearance and attire, your body language is speaking for you.
Assigning Meanings
It's difficult to say what any one gesture or posture may mean when it is isolated from all other signals that the body is capable of sending. Even an obscene gesture can be interpreted in different ways depending on what the eyes, mouth, and particularly body angulations are saying. Despite what has been written about the meaning of non-verbals, we're not able to pick apart the various signals and come up with concrete interpretations, even though certain gestures have taken on specific meanings in our society over the years. It takes all the body parts to comprise a message, and since the parts are constantly changing, the meanings also are changing. To use body language as a measurement of how your interviewer is receiving you, consider the sum total of signaling body parts such as eyes, mouth, neck, shoulders, back, arms, and legs and overall body posture (standing erect versus slumping or leaning). You can have a better interview if you observe the interviewer's non-verbals. However, before you can concentrate on non-verbals, you must learn to handle every other aspect of interviewing well enough that you can afford to pay attention to these subtle signals. So be sure you’ve done your other homework.
Outward Expressions
Gestures are considered to be outward expressions of inner emotions, but they can be difficult to interpret. For example, if Joan puts her hand to her head, does this necessarily mean she has made a grooming gesture? She might simply want to scratch an itch. Does yawning always indicate boredom? No; it could mean a lack of oxygen or an effort to process a conflict between two emotions or thoughts. Sometimes an individual yawns when absorbing new information. Taken out of context, the yawn could be misinterpreted.
Gestures and Postures
Researchers estimate that people can transmit more than 20,000 different gestures by combining their various signaling parts. Gestures in turn can be developed into entire nonverbal "sentences." Unless you devote a career to it, you won't be able to process even a fraction of that number of nonverbal messages. Even trying to pick up on the broad cues can be stressful during a job interview, and sorting the cues into categories may lead to inaccurate readings. If you use the four-part personality model, however, you should be able to achieve greater accuracy and build a better rapport through understanding. Here are some cues you might pick up as you look at the interviewer's overall posture:
- An Approach 1 is likely to appear relaxed and lean forward with open posture.
- An Approach 2 is likely to appear relaxed and sit upright with open posture.
- An Avoidance 1 is likely to appear tense and lean to one side with closed posture.
- An Avoidance 2 is likely to appear tense and lean back with closed posture.
For those who maintain that reading body language is easy, I suggest the following task. (I’m not allowing for the distortions that naturally occur when people receive and process this kind of information through their own filters.) If you care to try it, be sure to do it in environments other than your interviews.
- Look at people's faces: Do the faces appear angry or hostile? Do they look worried or defensive? Bored or dispassionate? Enthusiastic or eager? Active or involved? Supportive or understanding? Calm or complacent? Curious or puzzled? Do you see any other emotions? Check this out through courteous questioning.
- Notice the tilt of the individual's head. Because the head is so prominent a part of the body, many people notice it early on. Is the individual's head tilted up? Down? Forward? Back? To the side? Held symmetrically and balanced? Check your observations in the same way. Consider what it would be like to do the same thing with all the other signaling parts of the body. Perhaps you are ready to agree that it might be enough for now to be able to assess who's with you and who isn't. If so, let's continue on with the task at hand and keep to a discussion of this interesting topic in perspective.
People tend to rely on words having to do with their visual, auditory, and tactile senses—their representational systems—to translate and process information about life around them. How an individual does that, and which system he or she uses, may change with circumstances. People tend to prefer one mode in a particular situation or at any given moment. So be sure to monitor their messages for word choices as well as content. Match the mode an interviewer is using and you will facilitate communication because you will be transmitting through the same channel. Practice doing this before you schedule an interview and in your interview rehearsals. A researcher named Edgar Dale developed what is now known as "Dale's Cone of Experience." According to Dale, people generally remember 20 percent of what they hear, 30 percent of what they see, 50 percent of what they hear and see, and 80 percent of what they hear, see, and do. So, to make the most solid impression possible, build from the interviewer's primary mode and engage the other two modes when¬ ever opportunities present themselves.
