Page 145 - 101 Dynamite Answers to Interview Questions

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Handle Yourself

N o nve r ba I I y

ODAY MOST PEOPLE RECOGNIZE THAT HOW THEY
communicate is itself a message. In fact, your nonverbal com-
munication may convey both the bulk of your message and be
T more believable than your verbal statements. Indeed, communi-
cation studies suggest that in many situations approximately two-thirds
of what is communicated is through nonverbal means, and because we
lwow that nonverbal behaviors are the harder to control, we tend to give
greater credence to these messages.

The Nonverbal Edge

We also hear from people who conduct screening interviews that the
initial decision whether to screen a person out of or into a future inter-
view - made during the first three to five minutes of the face-to-face
session - is seldom changed even though the entire interview may be five
to ten times that length. What are the interviewers responding to?
Certainly not primarily to the content of the verbal interchange, but
rather to initial reactions to nonverbal cues.

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