By Amy L. Hayden
Sometimes it's not what you don’t say, but how you don’t say it. Unspoken signals can make all the difference in an interview. Here’s how to land a job without saying a word.
By anyone’s standards, interviewing for jobs in New York City is a cut-throat enterprise. Regardless of whether you’re looking to land an entry-level position or the corner office, in today’s economy there are often hundreds of viable candidates competing for the same position. Given how many people want to work in New York City, it’s a feat to even be asked in for an interview.
You’ve heard the familiar advice from friends, books and websites—do your research, prepare a list of questions, dress to impress and bring a copy of your resume. But what’s often lost on most interviewees is how much what you don’t say matters. The nonverbal signals you give off can make or break you in the eyes of an interviewer. Body-language expert Patti Wood, the author of SNAP: Making the Most of Body Language, First Impressions, and Charisma, notes that hiring decisions are often made within the first ten seconds.
“We are able to read up to 10,000 nonverbal cues in less than a minute,” says Wood. “Many hiring decisions in interviews are based on reading those cues in an instinctual way, with the interviewer spending the rest of the interview looking for evidence to support her initial snap impression.”
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