[SOUND] Hello, everyone, and
welcome to our fourth module.
Are you getting ready for
your first job interview, or your fifth?
Do you need to interview new employees for
your company?
Do you want to make a good impression
on a future employer or employee?
This module on keys to a strong interview,
will help you with all
of these situations.
Over the next three lessons,
you will focus on improving
personal skills, pronunciation for
-ed and -s endings, and key language
that produce successful interviews.
So let's start with our fist lesson
on getting ready for the interview.
Whether you are conducting
your interview or
being interviewed,
you want to be prepared.
And because interviews are all about
making a great first impression,
your body language, which includes all
of the non-verbal ways we communicate,
should be your first focus and
our focus for this lesson.
So how can you use your body language
to make that great first impression?
As we discussed and
practiced in module one,
our body language communicates a lot about
us, even more than what we actually say.
Before we even say one word our
body language sends lots of
messages to the people we're with.
And in an interview,
we want to be very sure that the first
impressions we give are positive.
And because we're talking about interviews
in English, rather than your local
language, you might find that
the situation be more challenging
because body language varies from
culture to culture, and place to place.
But it's not that difficult
to avoid mistakes or
misunderstandings if you prepare.
How can you prepare when
it comes to body language?
First, always be aware
of your body language.
Your posture, facial expressions,
hand gestures and tone of voice.
Look at pictures of yourself
in different situations.
Practice talking about
yourself in front of a mirror,
or even better, practice it in
a real situation and film yourself.
Does your body language
show your best side?
In North America, standing or
sitting tall, smiling, using hands
expressively and politely and keeping
a positive tone of voice all contribute to
making a strong and lasting impression.
Would that be considered
positive body language for you?
Think about body language that might
be specific to your own culture, and
decide if it's appropriate in others.
Do a little research to find out.
What else can you do to be sure your body
language is helping and not hurting you?
One solution is to observe the people
at the interview and mirror or
copy their body language.
This is something we do naturally
in everyday situations.
Think about what you do
when someone smiles at you.
You smile back.
This natural mirroring brings
us closer to people and
helps us make connections with others.
It's the same in an interview.
I want to discuss another aspect
of body language in this lesson.
How our body language affects
how we feel about ourselves and
how we can build confidence
through better body language.
In her now very famous TED talk,
social psychologist,
Amy Cuddy of Harvard University,
talked about the question she
wanted to answer with her research.
Can you change how you feel about
yourself through your body language?
Can your body change your mind?
Her answer?
Yes to both.
According to Cuddy,
the research was very simple.
She asked people to practice two
different types of body poses, open and
powerful, or closed and powerless.
They practiced for only two minutes.
Then, those same people were filmed
in a job interview situation.
Finally, other people looked at the films
and decided who they would hire for a job.
Every person who they picked had practiced
a high-power pose before they filmed
the interview In
the resource materials for
this lesson, you'll find more information
about Amy Cuddy and her famous talk.
I encourage you to practice our
recommendation, particularly power posing.
See if it can help you achieve
a positive personal presence.
It's time to review.
In this lesson, we discussed how
to get ready for an interview by
reflecting on our body language, or all of
the other non-verbal ways we communicate.
We talked about positive body language for
job interviews,
the effectiveness of mirroring, and
how our body language actually plays
a role in how we think about ourselves.
As you work through this module,
keep in mind that positive, productive,
nonverbal communication is the first
step in a successful interview.
[SOUND]
