Nonverbal Communication and Your Job Interview

Nonverbal Communication and Your Job Interview In The Wall Street Journal,The Power of Nonverbal Communication,provides some very interesting information regarding the unconscious and nonverbal ways that humans communicate with one another. Dr. Alex Sandy Pentland,a professor at the MIT Media Lab, has written the book Honest Signals, based on studies related to unconscious social signals and patterns in how we interact with other peopleoffering insight into our intentions, goals and values. He claims we can accurately predict the outcomes of situations ranging from job interviews to first dates! Specific areas ofcommunication includedmonitoring the levels of nervous energy using a sociometer, which indicated excitement,anticipating responses in conversation indicating levels of interest,evidence ofmimicry of gestures, correlating with feelings of trust and empathy and finally fluency or consistency in tone or motion, suggestinga level of expertise orof being well practiced. In studying job interviews,Dr. Pentland says, We found that if job candidates show confidence and practice, if theyre mirroring the inteviewers gestures, if theyre active and helpful, if they act the right way, theyll get the thumbs up. The MIT Press, Honest Signals, How They Shape Our World,saysscientific backgroundis presented in this book providing an understanding of this form of communicationand shows that by reading our social networks we can become more successsful at pitching an idea, getting a job, or closing a deal.