Darrin Grella – Interview Guru

Posture is one component of body language during your interview. With the market tightening and the amount of qualified individuals in the marketplace, it is imperative to improve. Improve yourself every single day. Tell yourself that you are going to have a wonderfully productive day today. There is no better way to have a great day than to learn and implement a new skill. Today’s skill to be learned is regarding posture.
Firstly, let me define what is in my confused mind to what posture means. There is physical structure of your body, what we call body language, and there is positioning or attitude that you portray. Secondly, I would like to express traits or techniques to be followed in each of those two areas.

PHYSICAL Posture:

• Stand up to shake the interviewers hand. (may not fit but it is a pet peeve of mine and shows your interest, effort, and energy level)
• Mimic physical posture to a point. If the interviewer is formal, mimic those moves. If the interviewer is leaning back with their feet up on the desk you can maybe at best sit back in your chair and relax a little. You should attempt to be anxiously engaged in the interview by sitting on the front of the chair leaning into the conversation.
• Mimic verbal tone. Sometimes employers are slow talkers others act as if they are on speed and can’t slow down. Match their pace of conversation. Pretend that you are having a conversation with someone in the car next to you. Are you on city streets or the highway.
• Eye contact. It is alright to look someone in the eye during your interview.

ATTITUDINAL Posture:

• You are being interviewed by the company. In today’s “employers market” you are no longer at as much liberty to be interviewing the company. You are interviewing to sell yourself and your ability to make an impact on the company.
• Too nonchalant or too desperate. I used to get a call from a sales guy trying to sell me his recruiting software. He would call me 2 or 3 times per day asking me if we had made a decision yet. This went on despite me telling him multiple times daily for a couple of months. His first name was Justin so we renamed him to DJ (meaning Desperate Justin) Try not to come across too desperate. Along the same vein, if you come across too “Joe Cool” you may just end up being “too good” to work at that company. Oh my gosh, I just got a voice mail form DJ while I was writing this post. Unbelievable!
• Show your interest. This is a critical point that I elaborate on more in my upcoming book however is an area that should be walked with a fine line. Selling yourself and your interest too much can come across as a recent executive put it as an “overly familiar style”.