Managing: Between The Lines

MANAGING
Between The Lines

Seasoned interviewers know more than to base their selection on what's said at interviews. They know what's unsaid is equally relevant.

By Vinod Mahanta

Then I told him, 'It's the shoes, silly'. ''Of all recruitment filters this must be the strangest. Or is it? Speak to a journeyman recruiter about what puts her off someone she is interviewing, and the list that emerges is stranger still. ''Overgrown nails, tight clothes, nasal hair, dandruff, a loud tie, louder socks, mini skirts, cleavage, tattoos....''

Probe a little further, and the list acquires a psychographic tinge: ''Arrogance, obsequiousness, a know-it-all attitude, inability to listen... .'' Smart recruiters don't need too much time to look for these: the duration of the interview itself will do. Ask Dr Yasho V. Verma, LG's head of HR. The company needed a senior marketing exec, the CEO liked one candidate; the head of the department liked the same person; and all that remained was for YV to meet him, and take care of the details.

TIPS ON INTERVIEWS

PERSONAL HYGIENE: The key words are soap and deodorant for women, and soap, deo, and razor for men. Facial hair certainly won't do for women, and most companies do seem to have an aversion to men with beards. Face it, how many investment bankers or foreign bank execs with beards have you encountered? Grit under the nails is out, as is hair growing either out of your nostrils or ears. Oh, yes, clean hair is a definite must-have.

BODY POSTURE: It wouldn't hurt (especially not your back) to sit straight and not slouch during an interview. Adopt the ideal listening pose. Hands on table in front, or on lap, eyes on interviewer and head tilted politely (and slightly) to one side.

GROOMING: You can't go wrong with grey or khaki trousers and white or powder-blue shirts. For women, formal wear, either Indian or Western will do. Round things off with a quiet tie (no funny pictures), socks that are just a shade lighter, or darker than your trousers, and formal shoes that have been recently cleaned. Avoid jewellery of any kind. And if you have tattoos, mask them with skin-coloured tape.

ATTITUDE: Try and be yourself in the interview. Don't grin at the interviewer (s) or laugh nervously when faced with a tough question. Don't scowl at them either. Try and answer their questions with a straight face however unreasonable you think them to be. Don't argue, but don't imitate a door mat: it may pay to be politely firm.

But Verma didn't like what he saw at all: the facial expressions of the candidate, his tone, and general demeanour, suggested arrogance. And when he was asked to fill a few routine forms, which all candidates had to, he first refused to do so, then did so incompletely. Verma didn't have to think too hard to reject the man: ''I never listen to what people have to say; it's far more important how they say it.'' That statement should endear him to proponents of the form-over-content school of thought, but it would only be proper to remember that YV had two others, his CEO, and the head of a department, checking out on the content.

There's enough scientific evidence to suggest that hiring decisions are based as much on form as on content. Social psychologists have estimated that we make up to 10 (value) judgements on someone we meet in the first 30 seconds after we've met them.

These include those related to economic and education levels (''She looks like an MBA''); trustworthiness, social worthiness (''He's the kind of guy I won't have over at home''); level of sophistication, and economic, social, and moral heritage. Not convinced? A 1996-study titled Silent Messages by Albert Mehrabin, a professor at University of California, Los Angeles, discovered that 55 per cent of the impact we make on others is a function of our appearance, 38 per cent, our voice, and 7 per cent, the content (or what we say).

''Every small cue counts,'' says Satish Pradhan, the head of HR of the Tata Group. Pradhan remembers an incident when he was working for ICI. He was vested with the responsibility of picking a CFO for a $10 billion business.

One of the brightest candidates he interviewed was a smart young woman who, everyone on the interview panel agreed, was just right for the job. But Pradhan wasn't so sure: she had turned up for the interview in jeans and a casual shirt, and the job entailed frequent meetings with banks and other such conservative entities.

So, he asked her to meet with the panel again. This time she turned up in a conventional business suit that would have met with the approval of one Reginald Jeeves. ''I just wanted to see how you'd react to the suit,'' she told Pradhan. If there's a moral in the story, it misses this writer by a mile, but the one thing that comes through loud and clear is that Pradhan was close to rejecting the best person for a particular job, simply because she was wearing the wrong clothes.

That happens more often than you think it would: the appropriateness of dress and demeanour is one thing that most interviewers look for in a candidate, and it is a fairly easy thing to measure.

What other things do recruiters look for? They try to see whether the candidate's body language is in sync with what he (or she) is saying. ''An interviewer will try and corroborate what a person says by reading his non-verbal conduct,'' says R.P. Singh, General Manager, HR, Philips.

For instance, a person who avoids looking straight into the eyes of the interviewer is either unsure of what he is saying, or is lying. ''If he sees you in the eye, he believes what he is saying,'' says Sujit Bakshi, the Vice-President (HR) at HCL Technologies.

That may seem a trifle simplistic-and most people being interviewed these days are smart enough to look you straight in the eye and lie-but there are other things that seasoned interviewers look for: does the candidate sit still, or fidget? Does he shake his leg or twiddle his thumbs while speaking (a sure sign of nervousness)?

How does he react to a stressful question? (If he flails his arms, stammers, or gets shifty eyed, he isn't used to stress) And even if a person is able to fudge all these and lands the job, the result is a zero-sum game: it is difficult to fudge behaviour forever, and the company will get rid of the person sooner than latter once the truth is out.

For the person being interviewed, there is just one way out: to be himself or herself. ''Often,'' says Pradhan of the Tata Group, ''people forget to bring themselves into the interview.'' Last word: just improve your walk some. A few recruiters believe in seeing how candidates walk into and out of a room. Yasho Verma does that, and he is certainly no crank.

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