Hope Hicks Is "Enjoying The Attention," Says Body Language Expert

Hope Hicks testified in a closed-door hearing before the House Judiciary Committee on Wednesday, and an expert said her body language was very revealing.

"Oh my god, she's enjoying this," body language expert Patti Wood told Refinery29 as she watched a brief video of Hicks walking down a hallway and ignoring reporters' questions. "That's so fascinating. But I'm not incredibly surprised."

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Patti Wood, MA - 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.
     

Job Interviews and Body Language, Algorithms And Online Job Interviews

Software is screening resumes and analyzing video interviews. But what if you want to be treated like a person?

I’ve been pursuing a master’s degree for the last couple of years, and I’m worried about hitting the job market, mostly because job searches seem to have changed since I went back to school.

Companies are screening candidates by using automated video interviews, parsed by algorithms. One of my classmates had an interview with a beauty company last spring. She didn’t go to its offices or talk on the phone with someone — instead, she sat alone in a library study room. Questions flashed across her laptop screen, each time giving her a few minutes to speak her answers to the webcam. The company recorded her responses, to be evaluated later. Another classmate had a similar experience with an educational institution. This trend is set to spread: Almost half of respondents to a 2019 Deloitte global survey of executives and workers expect technology’s role in interviewing will increase over the next three years.

Employers say technology lets them access a wider pool of candidates, speeds the hiring process, shrinks time employees spend interviewing, and saves money. Video interviews save time for job candidates, too, says Sean Rogerson, managing director of the Boston office for employment agency Michael Page.

But my classmates say they found these interactions awkward, devoid of the normal back-and-forth with the interviewer. Neither made it to the next round, perhaps no surprise, since recruitment software can now identify mood based on how your voice sounds. In fact, these programs can look at your video interview and identify your education level, whether you’re lying, and your cognitive abilities, according to a Deloitte report. HireVue, one such video interviewing platform (customers include the Red Sox, Ocean Spray, and Dunkin’ Brands), uses predictive analytics to assess and filter job candidates on their vocabulary, intonation, and body language, including facial expressions. It can also compare applicants with the “traits of top performers.”I fear that after a stilted, one-sided chat with a camera, my résumé will be automatically relegated to the “do not hire” database.

I worry about what gets lost without human contact. The majority of the impact in an interview comes from nonverbal messages, says Patti Wood, an expert in nonverbal communication. She says nonverbal cues have 4.3 times the impact of words. In video interviews, some cues get lost, she explains, so I’m not wrong to fret about my camera presence. Wood says people tend to be more spontaneous, less in performance mode, and more in the moment in natural face-to-face interactions.

Of course, I’ll have to get my résumé past the screening algorithm to get to the video assessment algorithm. I could be the perfect candidate but if I don’t use the keywords the system is programmed to find, Rogerson says I could wind up in the reject pile. Even before that, though, I have to get past the algorithm deciding which job listings I see.

A 2015 study found that women received fewer ads for high-paying jobs than men do. Another study found that because younger women are a valuable demographic to online advertisers, it costs more to show them ads, so algorithms on major digital platforms — optimizing for cost effectiveness — showed women fewer job ads in science, technology, engineering, and math. Just last year, Amazon reportedly scrapped an AI recruitment tool that was biased against women despite efforts to fix it.

Maybe the algorithms will get better, but bias isn’t easy to fix because algorithms don’t write themselves — humans do. Machine prejudices reflect human prejudices. Upturn, a nonprofit in Washington, says without active measures to mitigate biases, these tools will be biased by default. It has called on companies and vendors to be transparent about their tools, allow for those to be independently audited, and asks vendors to takesteps to remove bias from them.

Automated interviews can perpetuate bias, too. Even if the algorithm works well, the playing field for job candidates isn’t always level, because not everyone has the same access to technology, audio-visual quality, and quiet conditions conducive to video interviews.

And then there’s the legitimate concern about what happens to applicant interviews once they are recorded. Are companies keeping this sensitive data confidential, and protecting it securely? Do they delete candidate files when the job is filled? Or does the interview and assessment become just another piece of data for a person’s profile, at risk of being sold to marketers and data brokers, packaged and divulged and perhaps even finding its way onto the Internet like other personal information?

These new approaches may backfire on companies, because we job candidates are also assessing them. And we generally prefer dealing with people. In 2017, 76 percent of Americans told one Pew Research Center survey that they wouldn’t want to apply for a job that used a computer program to select applicants. Another Pew survey found that two-thirds of respondents deem automated video analysis of interviews unacceptable, and 57 percent feel the same way about automated résumé screening.

I wonder if I’ll even have a choice. I know if I’m invited to do a video interview conducted by a program, I’m going to ask if a face-to-face chat is possible.

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Patti Wood, MA - 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.
     

Ivanka Trump's Body Language In London Is Very Revealing, Says Expert

One of the media stories about the Trump visit to the UK that I worked on yesterday. FYI when I do a read I find out all the context for the event and people. So all this was happening while there were massive protests in London with 75 thousand people chanting, "We hate Trump!" and sometimes heard during a press conference with Trump.  Read the full "Refinery29 article interview below:

Along with the president and first lady, Ivanka Trump and her siblings attended an official state banquet with the Queen at Buckingham Palace this week, for reasons no one has quite explained.

The visit was, of course, eventful. Donald Trump attacked London Mayor Sadiq Khan, there were thousands of protestors, Princes William and Harry snubbed the Trumps, and Ivanka got booed outside 10 Downing Street.

There were also plenty of opportunities for our body language expert Patti Wood to do analysis: She picked a video in which Ivanka and her husband Jared Kushner are standing on the balcony of Buckingham Palace, Ivanka looking curiously frozen.  continue 

Patti Wood, MA - 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.
     

Nancy Pelosi's Body Language Sends A Strong Message About Her Feelings On Kellyanne Conway, Expert Says

Body Language Expert Patti weighs in for on the statement that Nancy Pelosi made to Kellyanne Conway for Refinery29.. "According to Conway, Pelosi responded, “I talk to the president, I don't talk to staff.”

Link to Patti's body language insights


Patti Wood, MA - 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.
     

Ekman's Faces of Emotion

Though I still teach Ekman's Six Basic Human Emotions we know that there are more and we know that culture plays a much larger part in determining the nonverbal cues of emotions than we previously thought. This week I am giving a full day workshop to Therapists, Counselors and Law Enforcement officers who deal with children going through grief and trauma. I will share recent studies by psychologist James Russell and his team has shown that when more realistic less exaggerated faces are used, children may not recognize the emotions until they are as old as eight. Younger kids don’t know if a “disgust” face is supposed to be disgust or anger, for example, and that children who have been abused have a stronger reaction to angry faces.

Blessed with a fantastic audience of over 100 psychiatrists, therapists, social workers, school and grief counselors, pastors, nurses, doctors and a few brave young people up out of their chairs for my opening exercise in my full day program on Body Language for Dealing with Children’s Grief, Loss and Trauma. An amazing day! Upside down and sideways! Sponsored byTomorrowsRainbow.org We went deep! They learned how to establish trust, sense danger and dishonesty, recognize signs of someone at risk of of death by suicide, recognizing the nonverbal behavior of malignant narcissists, sociopaths, and psychopaths and healing from PSTD! I designed the program to be energizing and uplifting and filled with take away tools as well as an extra big dose of humor! I love to share this program so if you have an audience for it let me know!

Patti Wood, MA - 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.