5 Psychological Triggers That Make Employers Choose You

What's wild is that once you get a job interview, it's confirmation you have the base qualifications for this role. And so then it's up to you to either talk yourself into or out of the job. And as a human resources leader who has interviewed thousands of people and reviewed the feedback of thousands of interviewers, it is very clear that interviews are designed to hire the person who is the best at interviewing, not necessarily the person who is right for the job. Therefore, it is crucial to know the psychology of job interviews and hone the skill of job interviewing so that you can have any job that you get the opportunity to interview for. I have two psychology degrees and have clearly seen five core psychology principles that help candidates to crush any interview, even if they're underqualified. And I especially love number five because you can say one simple statement to make yourself instantly more likable. Take for example, my client Tina, who's rejected for a role at Toyota because she didn't have automotive experience. With just a couple of months of working with Tina on job shopping strategies to to master interviews. I helped her to get reconsidered for the same role at Toyota, but this time suddenly they had a change of heart. Suddenly they didn't care that Tina didn't have automotive experience, and they actually gave her a $40,000 salary increase and a car. Tina's skills didn't change from the first time she interviewed to the second, so why were they suddenly so enthusiastic about her? It's truly her ability to persuade the interviewers, and that is what you will learn in this video. Strategy number 1: Social Identity Theory states that people naturally favor those they perceive as belonging to their group. I know this can sound discouraging, especially if you're interviewing someone who's from a totally different country or generation from you, but no worries. I have strategies that will work for you even if your interviewer is an alien life form from Tatooine. First, In job interviews, drop names like you drop your phone.

Jack. Oh, hey.

If you know anyone at the company, even if it's as simple as a person you exchange brief LinkedIn messages with, or the person who did your phone screen, mention them. Such as saying things like, what made me interested in this company? Well, Dylan, your head of sales, said he really appreciates the culture here. And Bethany on our call last week shared— doesn't that sound so much better than some canned answer? You don't even know Dylan. You just saw his LinkedIn post that said good things about the company. Bethany did your first round on an interview, but you sound like a coworker when you talk like this. You sound like you belong in their group. Some other ideas to implant this feeling is when you create a presentation, use the company colors and their logo to again feel like you're an employee. Research the interviewers ahead of time and find small things to connect with them on. Even if it's as simple as you both have moved cities every 3 years. I will also link a free document to help you write the perfect answer to tell me about yourself to make an excellent first impression. I'll link it below. Strategy number 2 is confirmation bias, which states that people look for evidence that confirms what they already believe in. In the case of interviewers, whatever is their impression from your LinkedIn profile and resume, the interview will often be used to confirm that initial impression, and it is difficult to change that perception. Also, coming in as a referral can create a positive bias in your interview. My client Glenn was targeting VP of People positions but wasn't landing offers. And even though his resume was getting him the interviews, I helped him to change his resume and LinkedIn profile using the GLORY formula. And he told me that those changes led to better conversations in the interview. This is something so many people don't realize is that your resume and LinkedIn profile are already interviewing for you. They are your first impression instead of the first thing you say on the call. So having a strong resume positions you in the right way and plays into confirmation bias in that your excellent interview is simply confirming that they are already impressed with you. I will link a free resume workshop to help with this, as well as a free LinkedIn profile checklist. It's also helpful for you to look at your profile and resume from the perspective of a person who's about to interview you. Does it feel directly in line with the role they're going to talk to you about? Does Your background and skills seem clear or confusing? Are you immediately impressed by yourself? It is difficult to do this for yourself because you are so close to your own situation, which is why I do it for my clients all the time. But do your best to put yourself in that third-party perspective. I'm also so curious, let me know in the comments, do you bring a printed resume into in-person interviews anymore? I always did, but maybe that's not that common. The third strategy is around expectancy effects, which is that people's expectations influence how they perceive and treat others, which is related to the more common idea of the self-fulfilling prophecy in an interview process. This happens so often because job seekers don't understand what is happening behind the scenes. So let me transform the way you think about interviews. A classic example of the self-fulfilling prophecy is a bank is financially healthy. People hear a rumor that it's failing. They panic and withdraw their money. Bing, bang, boom. The bank actually fails because everyone believed it would fail. The original belief was wrong, but the reaction to the belief created the outcome. I see this happen all the time in interviews, except in this case, the bank is the interview and the candidate is the one sabotaging their own success. Here's how it works and how you to use it to your advantage. Job seekers become jaded, so I train them to assume positive intent. Such as the other day, I was listening to an interview recording of my client who was asked 3 times in an interview about his experience with managing hourly employees. My client perceived this as being drilled with questions and being disliked. I perceived it as the interviewer wanting my client to succeed in the interview, wanting him to move him to the next round, so he gave him multiple chances to improve his unsatisfactory answer. A sign that was actually positive made my client subtly sabotage himself once he felt the interview was going poorly. Or take another example, when my client in her 50s told me that she had just experienced ageism because the interviewer mentioned that the team my client was interviewing for had an average age of 25. My client interpreted this comment as saying, you're too old for us, you won't fit in. When really what I heard was, we want to hire you and want to check that you'd feel comfortable working on a young team. Would that make you uncomfortable? It's a self-fulfilling prophecy because since my client reacted uncomfortably to the comment about working on a team that was about 25 years old, she was then disregarded as a good fit due to her age. But I coached her to approach interviews differently in the future, and she did not have that issue again. So reset your approach. View repeated questions as invitations for you to to see. View all different kinds of questions like, why should we hire you, not as a challenge to prove yourself, but as the interviewer saying, hey, I like you, can you please just give me the list of reasons as to why we should hire you so that I can easily advocate for you when I talk to the rest of the panel? I could go on and on, but when you switch to the job shopper mindset, you realize that interviewers are rooting for you. The fourth strategy is based on processing fluency, which states that information that is easier to process is judged as more truthful, more intelligent, more credible, and more persuasive. Double underline persuasive because when you're interviewing for a company, you are persuading them to make a high-ticket purchase, AKA purchase your services. So a huge thing I coach my clients on is how to be more simple, concise, and direct when communicating because actually overexplaining and giving lots of details and using lots of jargony terms actually makes you less persuasive. Persuasive, especially as you're going for these higher-level leadership roles. Take this super simple example. So I was helping my client write a note in her resume as to why she left her job. Her draft said, took a planned family leave following a reduction in force shortly after the birth of my son. She communicates this point, but the sentence somehow seems more complicated than it has to be and may even raise questions. I suggested she replace it with laid off while on maternity leave. From 16 to 6 and even more clearly communicated. You must do this in your interviews. The same exact principle applies. I'll link an Unshakeable Interviews masterclass below with some strategies as well as I'll link coaching in case you want to get direct coaching to master these strategies and get more offers. Because I have coached a lot of executives who lose offers because they think sounding more complex makes them sound smarter when the opposite is true.

True.

The fifth strategy is a really easy one, and it makes a big difference, and it's based on spontaneous trait transference, which is when you describe someone else using a trait, observers unconsciously associate that trait with you. Such as, watch this displayed perfectly in this acceptance speech by Ryan Gosling.

No time to thank everyone. I just would like to try and thank one person properly and say that while I was Singing and dancing and playing piano and having one of the best experiences I've ever had on a film. My lady was raising our daughter, pregnant with our second, and trying to help her brother fight his battle with cancer.

He spent his time complimenting his wife. Yet if you look at the comments in the video, everyone is complimenting Ryan, saying he's such a good guy. And that's the magic. Make comments during your interview like, I loved working at that company. I would have stayed if they didn't end up having to close. And he was an incredible leader and someone I tried to emulate in my leadership. You talking well about your past jobs reflects great on you. The same way talking smack does the complete opposite. Talking about how toxic your past job was, how you didn't like your boss, it all can make you seem like a victim or a complainer. And they're worried that you'd bring that energy into your next workplace. Rooting for you in your interviews. Be sure to share your success stories in the comments. You've got this. Wi-Fi high five.