NLP in job interviews Archives - Job Interview Coaching

November 15, 2015November 28, 2020

How to Tell If An Interviewer Is Lying

How To Spot a Lying Interviewer

Most job hunters see the interview as a one way process – the employer deciding if they want to hire you!

But in truth the interviewer is already interested in you, which is why out of, on average, 300 applicants you are one of six candidates the interviewer has invited to interview.

In the job interview, you do need to sell yourself, build rapport and make a lasting impression, but also the interview is about you deciding whether or not you want to work for this particular employer.

Employers know that if they recruit the best candidate it can make a real difference to their profits. This is why at the job interview start, the interviewer will give an overview of the organisation highlighting the key selling points from an employees point of view, as well as giving a future forecast of key goals, to create the positive impression that this is the company you should work for.

Throughout the job interview you will ask the interviewer questions, keeping a flow to the job interview. It is these answers that will help you decide, once you have been offered job positions with several competitive organisations, which company you want to work for.

When listening to the employers answers you need to be sure that the interviewer is being truthful, rather then spinning a lie just to ensure you will accept the job offer. If you accept a position only to find that the employer has lied, you will need to restart that time consuming and stressful process of job searching, it is far better to learn how to read the interviewer and spot liars.

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Below you find some telltale giveaways that will help you spot which interviewer is lying to you.

When reading interviewers you need to look for clusters of telltale giveaways, rather then making a judgement on just one expressions or body movement.

Spotting Liars – The Basics

Body language – when being truthful people will use a wide range of hand expressions and movements as people often talk with their hands. Liars will subconsciously limit their arm movements looking more stiff then natural

Touching Lips – when lying we unconsciously try and stop the lie from coming out by covering our mouths, watch for the lying interviewer touching their nose, lips or ears when lying.

Red Faced – liars tend to get hot “hot under the collar.” The deceitful interviewer can become red-faced or may pull on their collar to cool down, others will scratch their neck when lying

Moving Away – liars will often feel uncomfortable lying to your face and will subconsciously turn their body away from yours wanting to get away quickly

Spotting Liars – Reading the Interviewer

Timing – often a liar will say something and then follow this up with an emotion or gesture, while truthful people will say something and make the gesture at the same time. Gestures are often off pace when lying, emotional displays are delayed and then suddenly stop

Defensive – a guilty person will often get defensive in conversation, where as innocent people often become offensive. When questioning an interviewers answer, to collect more details, listen for defensive words

Building Barriers – Liars will often want to hide away from you, protecting them and will build barriers between you and them; an interviewer may hold a folder/collection of papers in front of themselves, creating a “barrier” between them and the interviewee

Spotting a Liar – Hearing Lies

Copy Cat – liars will often copy the exact words you use to answer a question “are you likely to gain a continuation in the contract” Liar: “Yes, we are likely to gain a continuation in the contract” A truthful interviewer is more likely to answer with more details “Yes we have good change, the contract manager is really happy with our results to date, they had to put the tender out to contract due to the duration of contract…”

Sticking to the Facts – truthful people will often tell a story and as the story is progressing will naturally go off on a tangent, liars will tell a “well planned story” in a more factual way without any additional “add-ons” example “Yes, we do invest in staff development”

Not Answering the Question – many people don’t like to lie, and instead of lying will answer a different question or just imply an answer

Distancing Language – liars will often use distancing language, with Bill Clinton famously saying “I did not have sex with that women” rather than saying her name, he distanced himself using the word “that” to avoid thinking about the person/situation.

Spotting Liars – Watch the Interviewers Eyes

When asking a question you can watch the interviewers eye movements to detect if the person is remembering or constructing a thought. When questioning a liar, you can ask the person several truths to gain a baseline and then ask them a question to see if they are lying (accessing constructed images, rather then creating a believable answer)

*This technique needs to be used in context, as some of your questions will need a “constructed” answer, also be aware that some people will accessing memories/creative thoughts opposit to the image above

Looking Up and to the right-Visual Remembered
Looking up and to the left-Visual Constructed
Looking to the Right (towards ears) -Auditory Remembered
Looking to the Left (towards ears) – Auditory Constructed
Looking down to the Right – Auditory Digital
Looking Down to the Left-Kinaesthetic

June 13, 2014December 6, 2020

Swish Away Your Job Interview Anxiety

Interview nerves and anxiety is a key factor when it comes to messing up your job interview. Why would an employer recruit a nervous, shy or ‘blank expression’ applicant, especially for high skilled positions?

The reason nerves are at the forefront in the job interview situation is down to the simple fact that many of us rarely attend job interviews. Repetition is often the key to becoming more skilled and more confident at a task. The lack of job interviews career professionals attends to make the job interview a scary and unknown environment.

Interview anxiety can be crippling. If you could swish away your interview nervousness and replace this fear with confidence, would you be able to perform better in the job interview? Would the confident you more likely to be offered a job?

Job interviewees become fearful because they will often imagine themselves in the job interview situation performing badly, prior to the job interview. This negative movie seems real, increasing anxiety and fear.

The Swish technique, taken from NLP enables you to quickly dissolve the negative feelings attached to a job interview and allows you to access a state of calmness and confidence. This is achieved by setting up a system to instantly move away the negative image you create when you think about your forthcoming job interview, replacing this with a positive movie.

These 8 Steps will allow you to change your nervousness to confidence, your anxiety to excitement.

1. Identify a Cue image for this situation that triggers the response (this could be receiving the interview letter, waking up on the day of the interview itself or walking through the door of the company you could potentially be employed with). When exactly do you feel nerves?

2. Decide how you want to feel, what level of confidence you require for a job interview.

3. Imagine this new confident you, how confident do you feel? See the world from this confident perspective. Imagine yourself as a new you who is free from interview negativity, you don’t have to know how you got this way, just enjoy this new positive feeling of being confident in job interviews.

4. See this image of you of a large film, make the picture bigger, brighter and turn up the volume. Make this image as compelling as it can be; make it brighter, louder, faster. Once the image is really compelling, shrink it so it ends up around the size of a postal stamp (it will now be small and dark)

5. Put a frame in front of you and put your original CUE image in it (the interview letter, company front door). In the corner of this frame place the resourceful image

6. Now you want t make both images change simultaneously, so the large cue images becomes small and dark, and the resourceful image becomes big and bright. This happened very quickly, making a SWISH noise.

7. Repeat the swish around 10 times, between each swish make the frame go blank. Each time you swish, speed it up until you are swishing within a second.

8. Test to see if you can restore the Cue picture, if you find it either won’t come back or the image is dark and dim, then the swish has worked. If not repeat this process.

March 9, 2014November 23, 2020

How to Get in a Winning Mood For Your Job Interview

Doesn’t it make sense to prepare yourself mentally as well for your job interview?

Having that inner confidence and poise will shine through to the interviewer when you walk in that door and give you even more of an advantage over all of your competitors.

If you are nervous, this will show in your body language and your speech reducing the chances of being offered the job role.

Confidence comes form mental preparation. If an interview was a race, the mental preparation would be the pre-race ‘warm up’

1. Fake it till you make it

Act confident and you will be confident.

Just by imagining being super confident in a job interview, research shows, actually increase job interview confidence.

Using positive visualizations tricks your mind into believing you are confident. Once you believe you are confident, your posture, body-language and your communication in general will come across as more confident.

Prior to the interview take 15 minutes to practice interview confidence meditation.

2. Search for the interviewer

Most people have a social media profile.

By finding your interviewer online you can start to view them as human.

Interviewee anxiety comes from how the interviewer is perceived to be – a big scary industry expert.

Applicants, to increase confidence, can change their view of an employer by seeing them in a new light. As you flick through their social media profiles and pictures you can see them for who they are – a person who also interviews people.

3. Exercise Away the Anxiety

Get up and go for a run!

Exercise is by far one of the best ways to release job interview stress.

Start the day with a run or yoga, sit-ups or a swim. Exercise releases dopamine which improves job interview performance.

All that build up tension can be released by a simple exercise routine.

By changing how you approach the interview day can have a massive impact on the interview outcome.

Research shows how a relaxed and more confident applicant will naturally have a stronger rapport with an interviewer, and can recall past experiences that can be used during the interview questions.