College Students Body Language Interviewing for Jobs

Last week I spoke to the career counselors for MBA programs across the country and I have been reading about college students concerns about finding a job and what they are most concerned about in their interviews. In last month's issue of Campus Activities Programming magazine, Megan Stumph from www.Cbcampus.com wrote a great article about college graduates persevering through difficult situations while looking for jobs. She mentioned several specific experiences of college grads and offered up some advice for those trekking through the job market. Here are a few recommendations Megan Stumpth made in her article:

1) Focus your resume and cover letter on the positives. If some of your college courses relate directly to the job you're applying for, mention them in the cover letter. If you balanced school and job to pay your way through, mention your drive and determination.

2) Be persistent in making contact with places you'd like to work for. Show them you know how to work hard for something.

3) Continue self-improvement. If you're working right now, consider how additional education could increase your pay or advance your career further down the road.

I would add work on your body language. Click Here to link to my article on interviewing written by my summer intern Julie Levin.

http://community.naca.org/blogs/edblog/archive/2009/04/23/difficulties-in-job-searching.aspx

Deception, College Professors Posing as Students Online

I was reading an article about college professors who teach online classes posing as students in the online discussions to get discussion started in their forums.(www.community.naca.org/blogs)

Oh my goodness. How horrible! The article asked if this was, "close to the edge of faculty ethics." I think the faculty members who did this crossed the line. If they want online discussion it is their responsibility to inspire it. I am a body language expert and I am a college speaker (for my college program descriptions go to www.pattiwood.net) as well as a corporate speaker. I know my college student audiences would be appalled to discover that sort of deception. I teach deception detection techniques. My audience members have horror stories of being "fooled" by such practices. No one feels good about being lied to and I believe students would lose respect for their instructors if they discovered that they where pretending to be students. I wonder if they change their "tone" and dumb down their vocabulary to act as if they are students. That would be so insulting.

Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional
The Body Language Expert
Web - www.PattiWood.net
Blog - www.bodylanguagelady.blogspot.com

Body language to get a man

SIGNALS THAT MAKE YOU APPROACHABLE

First, to make yourself more approachable, there are certain “harmlessness” cues you can give off. Your goal is to appear safe for a man to come up to. Men are not usually going to go towards a dangerous target. I know if you're a woman you want the world to know you are strong and powerful but in the social world of flirting your can't stand with your hands on your hips like Wonder Woman and expect men to come up and ask for your number. So when you are standing at a party, gathering or bar don't take up too much space. Taking up a lot of space communicates that you are powerful and superior. You have to show you have room for someone in your life and that a man doesn't have to fight to get close to you.

Series: Famous statements about lies #5

"Fear is not in the habit of speaking truth. When perfect sincerity is expected, perfect freedom must be allowed; nor has anyone who is apt to be angry when he hears the truth, any cause to wonder that he does not hear it."

- Tacitus
(http://www.geocities.com/Athens/Forum/1611/sins22lies0index.html)

For a speaker and coach on body language and deception detection go to www.PattiWood.net and book Patti or buy her book Success Signals.

Are they lying? IT consultants

If you are looking for a statement from IT Consultants to decipher if they are lying or telling the truth note the body language as they share any of the 10 most frequent lies told by IT consultants as found at www.eknori.de

1. This can only be accomplished through a large custom development project.”
2.“Of course your data is safe.”
3.“We’ll need a day or two for optimization and debugging.”
4.“Yes, we’ve done this before. There are several companies using this product (or technology). They really like it.”
5.“Server consolidation and virtualization will save you money.”
6.“Storage consolidation and virtualization will save you money.”
7.“The upgrade (or change) will be seamless and will not affect production.”
8.“The upgrade (or change) will be transparent to users.”
9.“Yes, we tested this thoroughly before installing it.”
10.“If you install Tivoli it will solve all your support."

I teach communication tools to IT people and find them to be very honest. Perhaps the problems come if they become consultants? (smile)