Matthew AI watched auditions for a project called Fifty Shades of Earl Grey and noticed that handshake firmness, energy, breath, asking questions, and genuine enthusiasm matter more than raw talent. If you can't market yourself well, you need twice the skill to get the job.
Hi guys, I am here in the audition room in Los Angeles for Fifty Shades of Earl Grey, which I presume you've already seen because we had to release this after the video so that we didn't give the game away on what we were making. I've never really done this before, you know, the only way I've ever really interviewed or auditioned people before is for my company, for staff. I haven't done it in this respect before, but what's been so fascinating is watching people come into a room and have them really they blow you away within a couple of minutes and what affects that and what I found was really interesting to me because although the ability of these people mattered, we call it, we may call it talent, we may call it skill, whatever, although the ability mattered, what came even before they showed their talent was actually more important as we went through. So I'm going to give you some of the things I wrote down. The first was a handshake. This is obvious, we've heard it a thousand times, but I'm going to say it anyway because I noticed it. there were three great handshakes and then the fourth person that came in gave me just an awful limp handshake and immediately just with the handshake I thought if there's no firm handshake how is she really going to deliver in this role? Now the two aren't necessarily linked but in my head they immediately became linked so if you're still one of those people that gives shitty handshakes don't do that anymore. The second thing I wrote down, energy. There was one particular person who came in and just had this this weird energy that was off. She didn't seem like she liked us. She didn't seem like she was trying to even be likable. It's kind of a weird vibe and I hadn't even seen this person perform yet. I hadn't seen them do their thing and yet I immediately thought this probably isn't our person. That's crazy because she could have been the best performer in the world and yet immediately I thought I don't really want to work with this person. I don't think it's the right person. Next. Uh, huh, bad breath. Here's the thing, I don't want to be mean about this, but we have the technology these days to fix bad breath. Chewing gum, mints, brushing your teeth. Next, Jamieson would ask the question in the audition, do you have any questions after the performance? And I can remember a number of occasions where I've been on this side of the table where I'm auditioning for something or I'm trying to get this, you know, I'm trying to do business with this person or whatever. And someone says, Do you have any questions? And I can remember many occasions where I've said, no, I don't. I now realize how destructive saying no was because being on the side of the table where I'm making the decisions and hearing someone say no in response to that question immediately made me think either they're not interested they haven't really done their homework. They're doing a hundred of these types of things this week, which is why we're not really that special to them. That didn't mean that they had to come back and say, oh yeah, you know, I had this question about the script or I had whatever. I didn't need them to have a question, but even just to answer with an opinion. I don't have any questions, but I just want to say whatever it is. You know, it's really interesting what you've done here or anything like that would have helped. But just saying no seemed to show a level of disinterest that that made us predisposed to not want to work with them. Lastly, obvious, but did they show enthusiasm for the project? There was one person that came in and talked about the script and she was saying, you know, I just want to tell you guys that I was crying, laughing with my friend when I read this script. I thought it was hilarious. You did such a great job of it. You always have to remember the person on the other side of the table probably has an ego. probably worked hard on whatever it is they're presenting to you and that if you like it you should speak up. So that's it, simple things, things that most of us know but you know the reason I wanted to tell you them is not because I think all of them will be new to you, none of them are new to me either but actually sitting on the side of the table where for once I was making the decisions with Jameson, it really made them resonate with me in a much bigger way and it was fascinating to see just how important these little things really are. There are two skills in life. Being good at something and then there's being good at marketing yourself for something. And the things that I'm talking about here, they're not even relevant to being good at something. They're about marketing yourself. But the reality is, if you can't market yourself, you have to be twice as good at the thing you're doing to win people over. If you're great at marketing yourself, then actually you'll still win. over more talented people because people will want to be around you, they'll want to work with you, they'll want to date you, they'll want to be in your company and that makes the whole thing much easier. It makes it easier for them to say yes. Make it easy for them to say yes. I will see you soon. I'm not the barista for you. You should steer clear of me.
You keep saying that Matthew. You make amazing cappuccino macchiato. What are you hiding? Why won't you let me in?
I had a British star in life. My tastes are very singular. An American wouldn't understand.
Enlighten me then.
How mad is that? I mean, it's right. No, it's brilliant. It's just mad. All right. Okay.
