Job Interview: What’s the Most Important Skill to Display?
What’s the most important skill to display during a job interview? It’s your people skills. It’s not the “I can work in a team” type people skills, but it’s how you interact with the interviewers. If you gain solid rapport with your interviewers you’re pretty much in. This might be hard to do if you’re not experienced in job interviews. It might also be hard if your people skills suck. Here are some quick tips on gaining rapport. These tips can be used outside of an interview setting as well.
1. Be relaxed at all times. This is easier said than done if you’re nervous. But try to appear relaxed. I usually lean back on my chair and get into my most comfortable position. Open your body up. Don’t cross your arms. Don’t block anything between you and your interviewer whether it be an object, your hands, or whatever. Also some interviewers try to “break” you by asking tough questions. Act like you’re unfazed by those questions.
2. Give good eye contact. Concentrate on either their left or right eye. You can pick. If you have trouble holding eye contact, start practicing with everyone you talk to right now.
It’s not a staring contest—remember that. I remember one interviewer giving me the psycho eye contact. He probably read somewhere to give good eye contact. So he gave it to me. He opened his eyes super wide and stared into my soul—never blinking. Yeah, that’s the type of eye contact you shouldn’t give. Just look at their eyes in a normal way.
3. Get into a conversation and not an interview with them. You are talking to your future boss and co-workers so get to know them. Joke with them, ask them questions, etc., Just remember that they still own the ball though.
4. Don’t be cocky. Cockiness is a major turnoff. I was able to observe various hiring managers. One thing they hated was cockiness. I hate it too if the person I’m interviewing is getting all cocky on me.
Remember that confidence is different from cockiness. There’s a subtle difference. One is that cockiness is overcompensating for something. Confidence is that you don’t have to compensate for anything. Cockiness is boasting how great you are. Confidence is showing how good you are without boasting.
5. Smile and appear friendly. People like to be with people that look approachable and friendly. Don’t smile like the Joker though, it’s creepy.
6. Mirror them. This is kinda controversial, and I rarely used it. But if you mirror your interviewers’ body language and speech you can gain rapport with them faster. I knew people who swore by this stuff. I even heard of people saying that they noticed someone doing this to them, but they didn’t care because it put them at ease (weird).
This make sense because one way to know if you gained rapport with someone is see if you guys’ body language and tonality match. This is why close roommates, best friends, couples, and even pets/masters have similar body language, speech, and looks!
On the flip side, don’t play monkey see monkey do. Don’t imitate them. You’re not trying to annoy them out of your amusement. You’re trying to mirror their body language and speech.
7. Finally, you can’t do any of these without practice. So talk to a lot of people. Get yourself into social situations and talk to people as much as you can. Learn how to be funny. Learn how to hold a conversation. Learn to be “cool.”
Depending on your situation and personality, I know the tips here are easier said than done. Even now I’m not the grand master of talking to people. But if you knew me long ago, I came a long way. So there are a lot of people in this world (about a few billion), so you can start practicing now.
Stumble it!
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