Body Language Never Lies

Body Language Never Lies:  The Importance of Body Language in Landing Your Dream Job

                Let’s face it, when you are being interviewed for a job you are essentially being judged from the moment you walk in the door. How well you can communicate your enthusiasm for the job you seek is just as important as explaining your experience. What most people do not understand is that non-verbal communication accounts for the majority of the information that you are relaying to the listener.  In fact, CareerCast.com reports that many studies indicate body language accounts for 55% of any response, while your verbal response accounts for just 7%. The remaining 38% is communicated through the tone of your voice, inflection, pauses, and sighs you give off when answering a question.

                In other words, even if your spoken answers convey intelligence and confidence, your body language may say the exact opposite. Many people discount the importance of job interview body language because they have been trained to place more emphasis on spoken words instead. But, a skilled interviewer knows to look for body language which contradicts the spoken words. Therefore, it is just as important to practice and master your mannerisms as it is to practice the spoken answers to commonly asked interview questions.

                According to the public speaking expert Matt Eventhoof, every person has physical habits which include fidgets, grooming gestures or postural tendencies like slouching. Normally, these habits have no impact on daily life. But during a job interview, the body language you portray could be the difference between landing the job, and not being considered at all. So it is important to know your body language, and what it may say to the interviewer.

Negative Body Language to Avoid

               

                ■ Do not slouch.  Lounging with arms and legs dangling will suggest you are a little too relaxed about an interview you should be taking seriously. Slouching or leaning over in the chair may also send the message that you are disinterested in the job or lazy.

                ■ Crossing your arms can be interpreted as defensive.

                ■ When you are nervous, your body shows your nerves in different ways. Frowning at a difficult question or at the wrong time can be a tell tale sign that you are having a difficult time answering the question. Also, a nervous laugh or tick can show your nerves as well. Be conscious of your facial expressions and mannerisms and try to control them during the interview.

                ■ Try not to show how tense you are. Tightly clutching a handbag or briefcase suggests a nervous candidate, not a confident, cool-headed character.

                ■ An aggressive handshake or an iron grip can imply arrogance, but a limp handshake might suggest weak character. However, a firm handshake can relay confidence and a willingness to engage in communication.

                ■ Avoid distracting body movements. Beware of moving your feet up and down repeatedly in a nervous manner. This is a sign of boredom, even if you do not mean it to be.

                ■ Resist the urge to touch your face or play with your hair when you speak, as this suggests you are lying.

                ■ Avoid distracting facial expressions which contradict the information you are stating.

Positive Body Language

               

                ■ Show them you know what you are talking about – touch your fingertips together to convey authority.

                ■ Your physical gestures should be open and expressive. You want to try to involve the interviewer in what you are saying. Keep palms up and open to suggest honesty, and avoid pointing or banging fists on the table to emphasize a point.

                ■ Demonstrate curiosity and enthusiasm while your interviewer is speaking. Making direct eye contact and leaning slightly forward are two of the best cues.

                ■ Subtly imitate or mirror your interviewer’s positive body language and mood to quickly build a rapport. You should adjust to the people and atmosphere of the room.

Maintain Good Eye Contact

               

                It is worth mentioning again that during the interview you should maintain good eye contact with the interviewer. If there is more than one interviewer, you should address each one as you answer each question. You may not know which interviewer will have the deciding vote in hiring you. Therefore, it is important that you never ignore anyone that may be in the room during the questions.

                Even if one of the interviewers remains silent, it is a good practice to maintain eye contact with them as well, and be sure to address everyone when providing your answers. If you remain focused on only one person, it could be seen as being rude or disrespectful. So establishing direct eye contact with all of the members of the panel throughout the interview will engage everyone and appear more genuine. You should frame your response to not only address the question asked but to deliver the core message. Consequently, you will be able to project a better understanding of your answer if you relay the message with good eye contact to the entire panel.

Dress for Success

                Understand that your interview actually begins before you enter the room. The first impression is a lasting one. This is why you must present yourself in the most positive ways from the very start. Even your behavior in the reception area may be observed. Dressing for success is also a way of presenting yourself in a professional manner. Wearing appropriate business attire is an important way to express that you are serious about landing the job you seek. Your clothes tell the interviewer that you mean business. After all, you are there to get a job and should want to be taken seriously. There are few better ways to initially impress a potential employer than dressing for success.

Close with a Firm Handshake and a Thank You

               

                Leaving the interview on a high note is equally important as the first impression you make. One last tip for ending the interview successfully is to close with a firm handshake. You want to leave the interviewer with a lasting impression. Be sure again to make good eye contact. Also, be certain to thank the interviewer for their time and the opportunity to work with them in the future. This also shows that you are contentious in your approach to finding a job.

                Remember that your body language says many things about you. It is just as important to practice control over your body language as it is to answer common interview questions. You should practice interviewing in a mirror, or even video your responses to pick up on how others may see you. Doing so could be the difference that sets you apart from the competition.

Get a Mentor

There is a story of a king who had three sons. To determine his successor, he asked them this simple question: How do you avoid making a serious mistake? The first son answered, “by making the mistake at least twice and then learning from it,” but the King called him foolish. The second son answered that he would learn from making a mistake just once, yet the king also called him foolish. The third son answered that he would learn from others that have made mistakes before, so that he would not make the same mistake, and the king made him the prince.  This is why you need a mentor; he/she prevents you from making the same mistakes that they have already made.
Most of us can look back on our lives and identify a person who had a significant and positive impact on us.
This person may have been a teacher, a boss, a spiritual leader, or a parent, and somewhere on our journey this person acted as a mentor. Not surprising, many companies are embracing the concept of mentoring as a professional development tool. Organizations are experiencing dramatic improvements in efficiency, productivity and retention through their mentoring programs.
A mentor is an individual with more professional experience in your field who offers you career guidance, counsel, advice and assistance from a real point-of-view based on his/her lived experiences. Mentorship is not only limited to your career; you could have a spiritual mentor, a relationship mentor, or a financial mentor.  An effective mentor is reflective, wise, understanding and willing to share his or her knowledge and experience in order to help you avoid mistakes and become successful. Having a mentor is like having a wonderful trusted ally to go to whenever you are feeling unsure or in need of support. A good mentor can also help you set and achieve career goals, make smart business decisions, overcome workplace challenges, learn new skills or simply offer an outside perception, network, discover new opportunities, as well as prepare you for an interview.
Finding the right mentor is probably one of the best career decisions you will ever make. There are lots of ways to find a mentor. If you are already working at a company, check to see if your company has a mentoring program, and if you’re not working, ask your friends and family members to introduce you to potential mentors. Organizations like SCORE (Service Corps of Retired Executives) has a database of retired executives from diverse industries and backgrounds who are willing to mentor. The easiest way to look for a mentor is to look around your workplace or your industry. Look for a person you admire and respect, a person whose insight, experience and perceptiveness you value. Most people are flattered to be asked to mentor, so go ahead and ask. When you are unsure of your decisions, when you need someone to simply encourage you, or to lean on – you need a mentor.

College Degrees

As a lifelong advocate of education and higher education and as a university professor and dean, when asked by students, friends, or anyone else if a college education is still necessary for achieving success, my answer is always a resounding YES!
Although popular culture has disillusioned millions into thinking a college education is a thing of the past, and like any Kardashian, LeBron James, or even Bill Gates, it is possible to be widely successful without a college degree, what the media, television, and pop culture cannot reimage is how the success of these few individuals represents only a drop in the bucket in comparison to the number of individuals who have realized success because of their college education.  
Additionally, in spite of all their fame and fortune, too often individuals who gain meteoric success through their talent, notoriety, or infamy often experience greater difficulty maintaining their acquired, perhaps even unearned, success or effectively managing their success. Clear examples of this are lottery winners, child celebrities, or athletes who at one time accumulated great wealth and fame but were unable to maintain or manage the many trappings associated with the money or fame. Hence the old saying “A fool and his money are soon parted.”
Though successful people who gained success through their educational endeavors are not immune to failure, because of their academic training and exposure to a comprehensive education inclusive of the humanities, arts, economics, and sciences, college-educated individuals are more equipped in handling the nuances of success.
When you know better,
you are able to do better.
The ability to manage success and all its trappings because you are better equipped to do so can even be seen among those whose success may not be based on their education. Among professional athletes who have experienced great deals of financial success, those who manage to retire financially stable and to develop revenue streams other than their player earnings and avoid serious legal, financial, ethical, and moral issues are more likely to be college educated than not.
Redefining Success
Large salaries, expensive cars and homes, and other accessories typically associated with having money are only a few of the commonly accepted indicators of success. Others may consider being well known and having national and international notoriety as aspects of success. What few correlate with success is the aspect of sustainability—being able to maintain one’s existence, redevelop, and even redefine your existence as necessary. Unlike some of the other paths to success previously mentioned, success gained through a college education represents a truly sustainable form of success.
The first message college graduates emit is their ability to be trained. Through earning a college degree, employers are aware of your malleability and that your talents and abilities can be used in many different ways. College graduates have demonstrated they possess a spectrum of knowledge and understanding. The breadth of knowledge achieved through earning a college degree affords college graduates an added advantage in the analysis, comprehension, and problem-solving of complex issues non-college graduates typically lack. The process of earning a college degree is as valuable as the knowledge gained from the process.
In the U.S., having a college degree places graduates in the unique position of representing less than 27 percent of the entire population who are of age to be college educated. When examining the college- graduate trends among minorities and women, this percentage is commonly reduced to mid-range single digits.
As with most rare and highly valued objects such as diamonds, gold, and oil, a college degree is a commodity that is not only rare but one which also improves the student holistically. And for those who are considering the odds and looking to place a safe bet, statistically speaking, earning a college degree is more likely to provide you with a lifetime of security than having your own reality TV show, marriage, or even hitting the lottery.

Asia Contributes The Largest Number of Students to the U.S.

Studying overseas has become increasingly popular for students all over the world. For American students, UK has been a favorite destination drawing largest group of students, closely followed by Italy, Spain and France during the last two years. Almost 60% of students studied abroad for eight weeks or less and took courses mainly in the social sciences, business and humanities.
In turn, the United States hosts many international students from around the world. According to Fast Facts, 2012 has seen an increase of 7% in international students in the US, a record high of almost 820,000 students. China contributed the largest number of students, about 236,000.
There was drop of nearly 4% of students from India; however, it is still second largest group equal to about half of Chinese students. Several countries, including Kuwait, Iran and Saudi Arabia, have shown a marked rise in the number of students they send to the US by at least 25%, nonetheless the largest group remains Chinese students.
A similar trend is in play at VIU, although not necessarily with the same countries. VIU receives the most inquiries from interested foreign students in Asia, followed closely by Africa.
pricy diplomas
In America, the planning stage for future careers starts with the education that parents can get for children, starting as early as preschool and continuing on to the university level. Many private universities now charge over $50,000 annually for tuition, room and board. It has been reported in the latest edition of The Chronicle of Higher Education’s “Almanac of Higher Education” that Sarah Lawrence College in Bronxville, NY has again been ranked as the most expensive college in the United States. In the year 2012-2013 it cost $61,236 for tuition, room and board.  Despite the many expensive private universities, there are also several more affordable options. As a non-profit university, VIU has been dedicated to providing students with excellent affordable education.
Education Spending
America spends more money on students than other developed nations. A report by the Organization for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) stated that by comparing education spending to Gross Domestic Product (GDP), U.S. spends 7.3 % of GDP on all levels of education, which surpassed the OECD average of 6.3%. And the U.S. was only topped by five other countries, where Denmark stood on top (8%).
However, spending enormous amounts on education does not necessarily produce equivalent learning outcomes. Among 15 year old students in the Program for International Student Assessment, the U.S. was ranked 31st in math and 23rd in science. Thus, it requires an appropriate funding formula on education that could match learning outcomes, designed according to different states’ needs.
Teachers are the other part of story. On average, the salary of a high school teacher was estimated at $45,500 by the OECD. On the contrary, the U.S. spends on average $53,000 per teacher. The recent economic recession has led to tighter budgets. Consequently, other countries raised teacher salaries more quickly than the U.S. Considering that education defines the roots of a culture for generations, the U.S. can still do more in the education sector.
most popular programs
Among international students studying in the United States, MBA degrees are most popular, yet, engineering, math and computer science, social sciences and physical and life sciences are beginning to catch up. At VIU, the trend reflects that in the rest of the United States, with business programs being the most popular, followed closely by ESL programs and computer and technology programs.