Something on confidence - tips to impress your potential employer and land your dream job

we have been told to sit, walk and eat in a particular way to give out a strong impression to others, but there are certain myths that need to be broken. It’s alright to extend a handshake to a lady or eating pizza with your hand during meeting people in public, says an expert. Sheena Agarwaal, director, Urbanista Image Consulting, tells us that it is alright ‘to be yourself’ and break some traditional rules of public meeting that are absolutely perfect.  

Outperform your boss by using self-affirmations to boost your confidence: 

Did you know that you can do well than your boss, manager or a senior level executive when the stakes are high? No, it’s not just about how talented you are, but your attitude also matters. A new study has indicated that when the stakes are high, people in positions of low power may perform better by using self-affirmations to boost their confidence.

What did the study say?

The study conducted at Society for Personality and Social Psychology conducted three experiments to measure performance in pressure-filled situations. When participants were in a position of high power, they tended to perform better under pressure, while those with less power performed worse. Lead researcher Sonia Kang, Ph.D, asserted that most people have experienced a time in their lives when they aren’t performing up to their potential and they take a test or have a performance review at work, but something holds them back and performance in these situations is closely related to how we are expected to behave.

How was the study conducted?

In the first experiment, 134 participants (60 percent women) were assigned in same-sex pairs to portray a recruiter or job candidate in a competitive negotiation involving the setting of salary, vacation time and other job benefits and to increase the pressure, half of the paired participants were told the negotiation was an accurate gauge of their negotiating skills. Participants in the low-pressure situation were told the exercise would teach them negotiation concepts and was not an accurate gauge of their negotiating abilities.  

In a second experiment, 60 male MBA students were paired together as the buyer or seller of a biotechnology plant. The sellers, who were in a position of power, were more assertive under pressure and negotiated a higher selling price, while the buyers performed worse under pressure.

The final experiment used the same biotechnology plant exercise with 88 MBA students (33 male pairs and 11 female pairs), but all participants were told the exercise would gauge their negotiating skills to raise the stakes. Before the negotiation, half of the participants wrote for five minutes about their most important negotiating skill, while the remaining half wrote about their least important negotiating skill. Buyers who completed the positive self-affirmation performed significantly better in negotiating a lower sale price for the biotechnology plant, effectively reducing the power differences between the buyer and seller.

Don’t go for direct eye contact. A more effective way to ensure you look interested and engaged is to look at different parts of someone’s face every two seconds, rotating from eyes, to nose, to lips, so you’re never just drilling into the interviewer’s eyes. 

• It’s okay to extend a handshake to a lady. While it was earlier believed that one must refrain from any contact, today’s business world is gender neutral and handshakes are absolutely acceptable.
• Eating pizza with your hand is absolutely acceptable. Contrary to popular belief, one need not use a fork and knife to eat a pizza. One can very well pick up a slice fold it from the two ends and eat it.
• It’s absolutely okay to pick your teeth while on the dining table. One just needs to cover the mouth with the other hand.
• If someone has their arms folded across, they are not necessarily uninterested in having a conversation with you. It could also mean that they are feeling cold.