I have been working with a recruiter that is a very cold woman. She is shrewd and cold. But over the period of a few days I was able to soften her up and make her laugh. It is this skill and marked with great wit that I have been able to get so far in my career. I try to entertain the people I am being interviewed by to make myself relate to them.
Every company has a clown and/or an alternative thinker. This is the person that keeps you entertained while he/she is stealing your salad/sandwich. Yes, I am guilty of it.
Even the recruiter’s colleague who had doubts called me up and wanted to speak to me about my resume. I won him over just like I won her over … just being myself. Charm isn’t about sex or looks. It’s about entertaining people’s minds and getting them to trust. I don’t think I was born with this skill. It might be a Darwin mechanism that made me adapt to succeed in communications or be unemployed, sexless, and ostracized.
I see a massive wedding ring on a man. That tells me his wife wants the world to know, HE IS A FAMILY MAN. So I will roll my virtues about getting married as the primary focus for success at work. I transition the discussion smoothly to something innocuous that I can make everyone laugh about after serious topic. “For a $50 donation, I can call my Hari Krshna friends and have them dance, sing, and annoy those guys picketing out front of your office.”
It’s very much like a date. If you do it right, you get a second date. Some people are better on paper, and some are better in person–like me. You want to engage your date into a 50/50 conversation being careful not to speak too much or not enough. And most importantly, you are using your judgment to size up the person to pass the test.
Remember to catch yourself from the obvious lies. For example, a woman will post on her dating site “I am easy person.” Then later she says when you text her or chat with her online “I am expensive.” If you tell the person you are an easy person, stick with that theme through out the interview. Sell it like you mean it. Don’t tell them you are ambitious if you are playing a simple person theme. It just won’t work. It’s kind of like when I get asked what I do for a living after I explain what happens in SEC complaints to someone. “I am a hot dog vendor,” I reply. It’s completely obvious that I am not who I say I am.
Just be yourself, but a more calculated self.
