Are you preparing yourself for an interview?
There are different ways of preparing oneself for an interview and one of the most common platforms is GOOGLE.
A candidate googles about the company, interview tips, how to answer some of the tricky questions etc. If you google about interview tips, you will come across many blogs helping you with interview tips, You will found blogs such as :
- Blogs on how to build your resume.
- Blogs on how to dress up for an interview.
- Blogs on Body Language
and much more.
However, today's blog is about 5 Body Language if not controlled can have negative effect on your interview.
First Body Language that make to my list is :
1) Smile :
Smiling face is loved by everyone but fake smile will not work well. Smiling face depicts that the candidate is confident, friendly with positive energy. Smile is an important part of Body Language and can play crucial role.Smile also means that you are happy and looking forward to join. But sometimes in over enthusiasm you can make a mistake by faking it. And fake smile will definitely not help you. Smiling face is important but smiling throughout the interview is not necessary. Know when and why to smile. When you meet interviewer greet with smile. Just to keep it simple do not overdo it.
An another important factor that makes to our list is :
2) Eye contact :
Eye contact shows that you are focused, confident and most importantly you are Paying Attention. There is a difference between maintaining eye contact and starring. Every one wants to be heard with attention and right amount of the eye contact is the key. The question that may arise is what is the right amount of eye contact. Early eye contact, while handshake or greeting is very important and smile is an added advantage. Eye contact shows that you are paying attention but that does not mean that you fix your eyes on the interviewer as it might make the other person conscious. While answering you can take break and then re-establish the eye contact again. If there are more than one interviewer then maintaining the eye contact with all becomes important.
The next to the list is :
3) Handshake :
Handshake can be considered as the first gesture that you can display to an interviewer. While there are many do's of handshake, you can forget to read the dont's as well.
- Stand at the appropriate distance. Standing too close or very far can make it difficult to handshake. Standing too close does not speak too good about you and the other person can feel offended too. While standing too far can make an impression that you do not wish to shake hands.
- Right hand should be used for handshake.
- While shaking hands, hold the hand strong and shake it strongly two or three times and then release it.
But the most important factor is that while you want to have strong hand shake, do not put to much pressure to squeeze the fingers of the other person. Do not shake hands just because you practiced it. Situation plays an important role.
The next factor that is included in the list is :
4) Hand Gestures :
Paying attention during an interview is very important and displaying that you are paying attention is even more important.Smile and eye contact show that you are paying attention. For example : In an interview you did everything right. You maintained high amount of eye contact and you smiled too. However, throughout the interview you were fiddling with a pen or keys. This displays lack of confidence or over-confidence, it can display nervousness and even it can give impression that you are hiding something. Using hand gestures while talking shows that you are confident but too much use of hand can be annoying.
The last point to be discussed is :
5) Facial Expression:
Interviews do not judge you only based upon question and answer round, but they also judge your body language. Lack of knowledge about Body language that depict something about your personality which you are not. Body language is a vast topic and I would be writing in detail about each topic in coming days. However, now let us discuss about Facial Expression. In this blog we have already discussed about two important facial expression
- Smile
- Eye contact
Few more examples that can be added to Facial Expression list are
- Laughing
- Frowning
- Raising your eye brows
- Closing your eyes
- Widening your eyes. etc
Facial expressions can be tricky. So control it. Do not look blank but use positive Facial Expressions.
