The Interview Mentalist: How to Influence Your Interviewer

Interview, Job Search, Resume and LinkedIn

A tall man wearing a sharp suit approaches you. You think you recognize the goatee on his familiar face. He’s asking for directions; he’s very confusing. He walks away. He seemed like a nice guy. You’re sure you recognized him…

Wait a minute—did you just pass him your wallet? You did! Why the hell did you do that?

You chase after the man with the goatee. He turns around with a smile on his face, and you do recognize him—it’s illusionist Derren Brown surrounded by a film crew, holding your wallet out for you to collect.

The Supermarket Con

People are influenced on a daily basis. Have you ever walked into a supermarket to buy a loaf of bread and a bottle of milk, only to leave with two shopping bags full of half-priced goods and two-for-one offers?

You may think that you’ve bought a great bargain, but supermarkets understand the value of sales psychology, which leads you to think you’ve made the correct choice in purchasing these items.

You can take a leaf out of the supermarkets’ playbook and use similar tactics in job interviews to influence the interviewer.

 

Influencing the Interviewer

To influence a job interviewer, you don’t need to lie—this is often a misconception about persuasion. There are three simple but powerful steps you need to follow to increase your job offers:

 

Step 1: Know Your Unique Selling Point

The key is to know your unique selling point and how you will add value to the employer’s team. This way, you can focus your interview answers and persuasion skills on getting this message across to the employer.

Supermarkets have the same system; their goal is to make you buy more products than you originally came in for. Notice that the supermarkets’ goal isn’t to make you spend more; it’s to make you purchase more products, which in turn results in you spending more money. It all comes down to the message they’re conveying.

The interview tactic is the same. If you can get across how you will add value to the interviewer, you’re more likely to be offered the position.

 

Step 2: Make People Like You

Derren Brown has his warm smile. Supermarkets create relatable brands. The truth is, if we like someone, we will listen more to what they have to say. We’re more likely to be influenced by people we like because with them, we let our guard down.

In the job interview situation, it’s easy to create a strong rapport because we have a built-in psychological tendency to like people who are like us. This is why matching values with the employer is a key skill for bonding relationships. If the employer is a stickler for deadlines, tell them how you value timekeeping. If being creative is deemed important, explain how you solve solutions using innovative methods. If the employer discloses that they like the ballet, tell them how much you love the ballet.

But building rapport can be even easier than this simple technique.

People tend to have a strong preference for one of their three representational systems (Visual, Auditory and Kinaesthetic), and they will speak using words associated with that particular system. Often, this is unconscious.

Here’s an example of words favored by different representational systems:

table

You’ve probably seen this in action without even realizing it.

You give someone a direction, and for some reason, they just can’t process it. You repeat it several times, getting more frustrated with each turn, until finally you say the same statement using different words (with the same meaning), and bingo—they understand.

For example:

  • “I can’t see how to do this; can you show me again?” (Visual)
  • “That didn’t ring any bells; can you explain it again?”  (Auditory)
  • “I can’t come to grips with this; can we start from scratch?”  (Kinaesthetic)

Listen to the word choices the interviewer is making and try to mirror them. If you speak using the interviewer’s words, your information and unique selling point will filter through easier, creating a strong rapport and allowing the interviewer to fully understand how you will add real value to their team.

 

Step 3: Influencing with Language

In the introductory story, Derren Brown was successful in taking your wallet because he used a mixture of psychology and influencing language patterns. Three of his tricks you can apply to interviews are:

 

1. Mind Reading

When we refer to “mind reading” in the interview context, we don’t mean actually reading the interviewer’s mind. What we mean is claiming to know their thoughts.

Suppose I said, “I know you’re excited to learn this mind reading technique, but before I go on, there are two things I need to share with you first.”

Most readers’ minds unconsciously accept my statement “I know you’re excited to learn this mind reading technique,” but the truth is, how do I know you’re excited? I don’t—but of the thousands of people who will read this article, about 90% will likely accept what I’ve implied.

This technique works in the job interview just as easily.

An example you may use in a job interview might be, “I know you’re wondering how I can use my experience in turning around underperforming companies on the brink of closure to become profitable.” The interviewer may not have been wondering this at all, but he’s now thinking about it. It’s the same psychology as when I say, “Don’t think about a pink elephant.” To make sense of my words, you have to visually think of a pink elephant.

This is why it’s so important in job interviews to make only positive statements about yourself—because the employer will recreate any negative statements visually in their mind; they will imagine you being bad at the job.

 

2. Giving Reason with “Because”

Humans always look for the meaning of things. In the job interview, if you state the reason why you can achieve the company’s goals, the interviewer doesn’t have to think about it. Take these two statements—which one sounds more powerful?

“I always achieve my targets.”

“I always achieve my targets because I have three years’ experience in the sales industry.”

Number two, right? Yet how does three years’ experience mean that this person always achieves his targets? He could have had 12 jobs in that time and never achieved one target. But because he gave a reason, we (or the interviewer) will rarely challenge it.

 

3. Increasing the Interviewer’s Compliance

An interview is about getting the employer to agree that you’re the best choice for the advertised position. You can increase interviewer’s compliance in this simply by adding a tag question to the end of a statement. A tag question softens resistance and increases agreement. A tag question is loaded to make the listener say “yes.”

Tag question examples include “won’t it,” “doesn’t it,” “can’t it” and “aren’t you.” For example:

“You can see from my resume how much experience I have at increasing turnover and profit, can’t you?”

“You’re probably interested in how I achieved contract X, aren’t you? Well, let me explain…”

 

These techniques have been developed and used for years by manipulators, pickup artists and con men. They have only recently been adapted to the job interview situation; be aware that they are highly powerful and will increase you job offers because they work on inbuilt human psychology theories.

Chris DelaneyChris Delaney is a career coach, founder of Employment King and author of  The 73 Rules for Influencing the Interview Using Psychology, NLP and Hypnotic Persuasion Techniques. Chris is a leading career coach from the UK, with over 10 years’ experience specializing in career coaching, employee motivation and specialist interview techniques. Connect with Chris and Employment King on Google+, LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter or at info@employmentking.co.uk.

 

Image: Flickr

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