Skype or Video Job Interview Tips from a Body Language Expert

When I coach my clients on how to prepare for Skype or video job interviews or a Skype media interview from their homes I give them this check sheet. 

·         Prepare your room. Turn on the camera and see what shows up on the screen. If there is a trashcan or a messy bookshelf clean it up.  Simplify your background.

·         Try different backgrounds.  If you have a laptop with a camera you can try different locations for the lighting and setting to make you look your best.

·         A lighting trick is to use only ONE lighting source if front of you that is set up behind the camera that offers diffused light that means a good shade.

·         Check your seating, and your camera angle. You don’t want look too far up or down it will age you and or make your face look distorted rather than symmetrical.

·         Make up is very important for women on Skype or recording. It’s not a very forgiving medium. Even men may want to use a little translucent powder brushed lightly over the face so they don't look sweaty on camera.

·         Make sure if you wear glasses that they don't have a glare bouncing off of them. Lens Crafters has no glare lenses for an extra 40 dollars.

·         Check your wardrobe. Check your wardrobe sitting down, pull your clothes down in front and in back so nothing rides up and make you look funny.

For women jewel tones like royal blue look good next to the face. Sleeveless dresses or with no more than three quarter sleeve look better than bulky jackets. For men make sure your shirt is crisp and the collar lays down flat.

·         Get your hair out of your face. If it normally falls into your face put it behind you ears or get it cut. When you’re nervous it is far too easy to touch your hair and push it back to calm yourself and it is very distracting.

·         We give ourselves little touches on our face, neck, hands and such when we are nervous. They calm us by alerting the brain to send calming chemicals. These are normal stress cues, we do them all the time but they increase during on camera interviews. Gesturing normally can reduce comfort cues. Don’t try to be still. If you have to have some place to rest your hands, you can also try practicing with your hands resting off camera on the keyboard if you are using a desktop screen camera or open on your lap off camera.

·         If you normally gesture don’t try to stop yourself for the interview. Gestures actually help us create and go down neural pathways in the brain. Gestures free up space in the brain and at times effectively “pull out file draws to memories” and can animate the voice giving it more variation, interest and emotion.

·         Tape yourself doing a dry run of your interview to check the sound, lighting and how you look.

·         Practice with someone greeting you and asking you questions while you look at the camera and answer to practice making eye contact with the camera. Preferably someone who isn't hyper critical.

·         The day of the interview do another dry run fifteen minutes before to check your connection, and sound.

·         Take a short relaxing walk before your. Walking syncs your right and left hemisphere so you can think logically and speak with emotion and dynamism.

·         You want your body to feel and look energetic. So move and stretch in a relaxing, smooth way before your interview. The brain creates chemicals to match how your body is moving or posed.

·         Breathe deeply once you sit down. Slow, deep belly breaths center you and supply lots of good oxygenated blood to the brain. Try putting a hand on your belly and breathing in slowly on three, holding for three counts and breathing out slowly on a count of three. Imagine the breath coming in and out through your hand into and out of your tummy.

·         Make sure you are entirely off camera and everything is turned off before you make a sigh, make a face or make a comment. You would be surprised at how many times that last look of someone saying, darn or some cuss word when they think they are “done.”

These tips for preparing for Skype job and media interviews are from my book SNAP Making the Most of First Impressions Body Language and Charisma and my media interview books.

Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

How NOT to dress for a job interview and tips for how TO dress from SNAP book on First Impressions

How to dress to NOT get the job.

1.      Dress casually so you will be comfortable rather than show respect for the company and the interviewer in fact, look rumpled, like you just got out of bed.

2.      Wear something out of style so it looks like you are unaware of what is new in the business world. Big lapels and polyester and shoes with worn down heels.

3.      Dress up, go way over the top, make your interviewer feel like your underling. For guys, that means a three pieced Armani suit and Rolex if you’re being interviewed for a low level position and for women that means a Channel or Amani four hundred dollar pair of shoes and lots of expensive jewelry for a low level job.

4.       Show off your toes by wearing sandals, flip flops are a future boss favorite, they love hearing the smack, smack, smack they make in the hallways.

5.       If you’re a man make sure your shoes need polishing so it looks like you really need the job.

6.       If you’re a woman were lots of makeup, heavy on the eye shadow and liner and jingling jewelry especially bracelets and rings that make shaking hands with your interviewer a challenge and a sound carnival.

If you know me, you know that sarcasm is not my typical way of speaking or writing, but it boggles the mind to see and hear from my corporate and small business owner clients the tales of how people dress for job interviews. You want to get the job, here are dressing tips from my book SNAP Making the Most of First Impressions Body Language and Charisma.

Excerpt from SNAP

In an interview, you are dressing to show respect for the

company and the interviewer. The culture of the company you

are interviewing with matters. The general guideline is to dress

one or two levels up from whatever would be appropriate for

the day-to-day work environment in that particular office,

and no more than two levels down or up from the interviewer’s

status.

If you are older and you overdress for an

interview, your employer may interpret that as your being

out of touch with the current culture in other ways. Keep in

mind that it is perfectly okay to ask in advance what the appropriate

attire would be for the interview. You can incorporate

this question into initial conversations or emails with the

interviewer, along with other inquiries such as a request for

directions to the office. Strive to be fashion current in colors, style,

and jewelry, including your watch. If you aren’t sure what is current

in professional clothing, read an appropriate men or women’s style

magazine or go to a high-end clothing or department store and

look around to see what is in style.  

  

To prepare for a big interview, Madeline picked out a conservative

pinstriped jacket and skirt that she had recently purchased

on sale. She carefully clipped off all the tags and checked out the

fit in front of her mirror. On her interview day, she shook hands

with her interviewer, a man in his forties with gray sideburns.

During their conversation, Madeline noticed that “Mr. Gray”

frequently tilted his head and body to her right side. Though

she thought it was odd, she didn’t mention it, assuming he had

a bad back and was trying to make himself comfortable. When

she got into her car, she realized that the side seam in her new

skirt had come apart — revealing more of her in her interview

than she had intended! Lesson: Don’t just try on your interview

outfit. Move around in it, sit and stand in it, even consider having

a friend take a picture of you wearing it. And by all means,

check the seams.

Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

I Created a New Job Category - Body Language Expert over 20 Years Ago - Some things your can do as a body language expert. How to use your body language expertise.

Here are some of my rough notes from correspondence with the author of a book that he is writing on interesting and unusual jobs using your passion.

What a great idea for book. I often have people ask me what do you actually do as a body language expert.

I created a career as a body language expert. I use my background and education in nonverbal communication in many ways.  I design and conduct speeches and training for companies, 

Consult with businesses on everything from hiring, Interviewing, detecting deception in employee and or vendors. I write books, and work with National and International media as one

of the top authorities on body language.

For example in the past two weeks I

·         Gave two workshops for business owners (companies with profits of 200,000 to several billion dollars) on ways they can use body language to lead and manage their employees, negotiate, and select their employees.

·         Was asked by the Today show to tell them whether a funny party trick to detect deception that is popular on the internet had any validity or research to back it up. (It didn’t, but it is still a fun trick.)

·         Did my weekly body language analysis for Life & Style of celebrity couple photos.

·         Met with several one-on-one coaching clients including several business owners.

·         Worked with a client designing a media interviewing course for Emergency Physicians who have to give crisis media interviews.

·         Was interviewed by several media outlets including a story on Chronemics, (the study on our perception of time) effects how customers feel waiting to be served.

·          Met with producers for a reality show called Kim of Queens and gave them body language tips for their guests on the show.

·          Wrote a newsletter with an article on gestures and several other articles.

·         Prepared for a three day workshop I am doing next week on Presentation Skills

·         Wrote other blog posts you may want to check out many in response to questions I get from my clients.

·         Began research for a set of lectures I am doing for The Great Courses lecture series.   

·         Did some “secret shopping” at stores to customize two presentations I will be doing for a Rent to Own Association.

·         Prepared for a speech on body language and first impressions I am doing soon at Johnson and Wales University. It has been a busy two weeks.  

I have website, a YouTube channel, blogs and more. You can google me or link below.

Take Care,

Patti Wood MA, CSP

Body Language Expert

Author of the New book

       

www.snapfirstimpressions.com

To book Patti email Patti@PattiWood.net

Office 404-315-7397

Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

Facial Expressions and Gesture Test

Can you recognize the emotions in the facial expressions and body language cue messages in the video above?

Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.

Why Customers Hate to Wait on Hold, Chronemics Secrets of Customer Service

Here is an excerpt
Excerpt from an upcoming article by Jake Edmiston for i-sigght.com

http://www.customerexpressions.com/blog/customer-service/why-customers-are-impatient-with-complaint-management/

Fuelled by market research, customer service departments are desperately trying to shrink the time it takes to respond to customer complaints. The latest study to mark a growing demand for prompt customer service found that almost 70 per cent of respondents expected their complaints to be addressed within 24 hours. Those figures -- and others like them -- have panicked companies spending more and more on customer outreach. 

On Social media, 42 per cent expected a response within an hour, according to the survey conducted by Convince & Convert. And Amazon.com is going even further, adding a new feature to their tablets that guarantees customer support within 15 seconds. When Amazon’s “mayday button” way unveiled on Christmas Day last year, the service surpassed its own expectations with an average response time of nine seconds.

Near-instant complaint management has quickly become the norm in the customer service industry – and questions usually revolve around how to provide it, not why we need to provide it.

The Study of Impatience

But a little-known academic discipline has attempted for decades to explain our insatiable desire for fast interactions. According to some students of Chronemics, North Americans have been hard-wired to feel small and inferior when others force them to wait.

“Somebody who is waiting, will feel they are of lower status than the person who’s making them wait,” said Patti Wood, author and non-verbal communication specialist who has harnessed Chronemics to train customer service agents and call centers.

“Research shows that waiting time is the single most important factor in customer satisfaction,” says Wood, who uses a cross-section of finding from psychology, sociology and anthropology to explain the need for prompt complaint resolution.

The theory traces back to 20th century anthropologist Edward T. Hall, who dubbed most Western cultures as “monochronic” – meaning they view time as a linear “road or ribbon extending forward into the future and back into time.” It’s difficult to think of time any other way, but Hall says other cultures are “polychronic,” so they don’t structure their daily activities around a concept of time as much as they do around personal interactions. In those cultures, which Hall claims are found in the Middle East and Latin America, missing scheduled appointments isn't often taken seriously.

In the North American model, however, time is almost always segmented into appointments, which has led to it becoming a commodity. We speak of time “as being saved, spent, wasted, lost,” Hall writes in his 1983 book Beyond Culture.

“Important things are taken up first and allotted the most time; unimportant things are left to last.”

The Black Hole Effect

In a customer service context, forcing people in monochronic cultures to wait for a problem to be resolved is equivalent to “stealing from them,” Patti Wood said in a recent interview with i-Sight.

“You feel like they’ve come into your house and taken something from you that you won’t ever be able to get back,” said Wood, author of SNAP Making the Most of First Impressions and Body Language “You’re subservient to them.”

When a customer is waiting on hold, the tendency to resent the company is made worse by what Wood calls the "black hole effect" -- where time "wasted" is amplified because "you're in isolation."

"You are in a vulnerable position. You don’t know the end result, you don’t know the person and you’re stuck," she said. 

 Patti Wood, MA, Certified Speaking Professional - The Body Language Expert. For more body language insights go to her website at www.PattiWood.net. Check out Patti's website for her new book "SNAP, Making the Most of First Impressions, Body Language and Charisma" at www.snapfirstimpressions.com. Also check out Patti's YouTube channel at http://youtube.com/user/bodylanguageexpert.