Your parents told you, “Learn to greet people with a smile, shake their hand, and look them in the eye,” right? That’s generally good advice, but your parents also taught you something else: “DON’T STARE!” Your parents were right to give you both bits of advice, but in the interviewing world the common advice way overstates how much eye contact is best. Recommendation: Maintain eye contact about 50% of the time. At our last Topgrading Workshop our president Chris Mursau dramatized how 100% eye contact harms rapport. He took a chair kitty corner from an attendee, Susan, and said, “Let’s pretend we’re 2 hours into a 4-hour interview. We just came back from a break, and I say, “Susan, let’s talk about your next job at Acme. Tell me, what were your major responsibilities?” Susan responds but Chris doesn’t take notes. He asks, “What were your major successes, your accomplishments?” She talks again and Chris is looking intently into her eyes and takes no notes. “Ew,” she laughed, “You’re staring and it’s creepy.” Recommendation: Don’t be creepy. Take a lot of notes and look down when you’re writing or typing. It’s natural for you to show you’re listening and interested by nodding, saying “Uh-huh,” “Sure,” etc. and interrupting from time to time to ask for clarification or ask a follow-up question. Recommendation: Try a Tandem Interview. In Topgrading there are two interviewers. With the Tandem Topgrading Interview the principal interviewer takes some notes and maintains 75% eye contact, and the secondary interviewer takes constant notes and only has about 20% eye contact. Perfect! I hope these tips help you avoid costly mis-hires!
