Your Body Language and the Job Interview

3 October 2016

Please indulge me for a minute and stand up.  Stretch your arms out by your sides, and widen your stance.  Straighten your shoulders and lift your chin.  Then hold this posture for a few minutes. (If you are in a situation where standing is not possible, then do the same from your seat).

Go on, give it a little try...

Congratulations, you have just increased your courage, confidence and belief in yourself.

By enlarging your body you have sent subtle signals to your brain that will result in you feeling more powerful, and this sense of power will have you perform better at whatever task you do next. 

We all know that the way you hold your body impacts how others perceive you.  A lesser-known fact is that the way you hold your body impacts the way you perceive yourself.

Go to the loo

An odd piece of advice I give whenever anyone has a job interview is the advice to “go to the toilet” – yes, for the last minute nervous wee, but also to stand in what researcher Amy Cuddy calls a Power Pose.  Cuddy’s research has shown that when you stand, or sit, in a way that lengthens you limbs with your spine straightened, shoulders back, chin forward and arms away from your sides for just 2 minutes your levels of testosterone, the dominance hormone, are significant elevated.  And testosterone makes you feel competent and powerful.

Conversely, when you hold your body in a small, hunched over, folded in posture levels of cortisol, the stress hormone, become elevated and you feel weaker, less confident and don’t perform at your potential.  A gesture that appears to be particularly damaging is the nervous touch of your neck and/or face.

Now this is important information when you have a job interview or important meeting to attend.  You need every small advantage you can get, and if sitting, leaning over and rereading your application (behavior most people do immediately before their interview) guarantees you are less confident, then don’t do it.

Specific research Cuddy has conducted in interview situations has shown that candidates who Power Poses for just 2 minutes prior to their interview receive higher ratings in the areas of competence, composure, confidence, captivation, and enthusiasm from assessors. And these ratings positively influence the interviewers decision to hire.

In addition to the chemical changes that occur, what also happens is that the Power Pose increases the degree to which you subconsciously engage in small positive non-verbal signals.  With just two minutes of Power Posing you will smile more naturally, your handshake is more genuine, you engage in more eye contact and you may even increase the level of appropriate touch you do (e.g. a touch on the elbow).  These elements combine to have others invest higher levels of trust in you creating upward spirals of positive emotional contagion.

Warmth is needed too

Now, an important thing to note is that this is about what you do prior to your interview, not what you do during it.  Power Pose prior to going into the interview then focus on having warmth during the interview.  Don’t try to hold yourself in an unnatural dominant pose during the interview – it will backfire.  You will just feel uncomfortable and come across as inauthentic and lacking in warmth – and warmth is vital.

While Power Posing does increase the level of trust people will have in you, for it to be supercharged it needs to be paired with warmth.  Competence and power without warmth engenders fear not trust.  This is because when people see you as powerful they know you can follow through on getting things done, but without warmth they are not convinced you will do so with their best interests at heart so they are wary of you.  This little sense of wariness about you leads the interviewer to have subtle drops in capacity to focus and listen to what you say.  So in an interview situation if you don’t convey warmth the interviewer will hear less of what you say and have a slight sense of wariness.

The issue of warmth is especially important for women.  Imagine a line – at one end of the line is competence, on the other end is warmth.  There is a tendency for people to evaluate women as being at either one end of this line or at the other.  Women seen as high on one dimension are often judged as being low on the other.  And, of course typical stereotypes of women tend to value the warmth aspect.  This is why it is especially important for women to be mindful of how their body language supports the evaluation others make about them.

More than just useful in job interviews

While this article has focused on interview situations, don’t just limit it to the interview.  Apply it wider.  In small subtle ways the way you hold your body is either supporting your career or undermining it.  Holding your body more powerfully will elevate your risk taking behaviour, your orientation towards taking action, your pain tolerance, your capacity to think abstractly, your sense of control and optimism, and will reduce anxiety and inspire others to see you as a leader.

Give yourself a little dose of Power Posing each day.  To paraphrase Cuddy: 

Your body changes your mind

Your mind changes your behaviour

Your behaviour changes your outcomes

As ever wishing you a Flourishing Career

Katherine