Ramit Sethi coaches a student on interview habits, noting that women who smile too much risk seeming flirty or ditzy. He shares how he once smiled too little in scholarship interviews and improved his results by practicing a warmer presence.
In our testing, one thing we discovered are several verbal tics that men make and also that women make. Now they're very different. Men's verbal tics are quite different from women's. One thing that women tend to do is smile too much. Now in the best case in an interview, if they're smiling too much, they may come across as really friendly. But in the worst case, they can come across as flirty or unprofessional. That's not a good thing, especially for an interview or a natural networking coffee meeting. So here's a video where I address that with one of my students. Do you remember some of the advice I gave you to follow specifically as a woman? Do you remember we talked about smiling in interviews?
Not as many exclamation points.
Uh huh. And some of the, some of the advice I gave you was to be really aware of the invisible scripts that men have towards women in the workplace. So smiling is good. Smiling too much is really ditzy. Exclamation points. Kind of ditzy and bad.
Right, right.
Do you remember any of these other things? How did you put these into practice when you were doing your dream job search?
I mean, when I was, for example, when I was in my interview and I was just. And I was sitting there and I'd. Because I'm kind of a bubbly person, so we know I was sitting there and I'd feel myself start to get kind of smiling and giddy. But then I'd call myself and remember that these people, they're salesmen, so they want to be able to see that I'm very competent. And something that you can't give off is that you're ditzy. So I just made sure to kind of have that in the back of my mind. That presentation really does matter.
Do you think that there's good advice out there for women when it comes to their career search?
Sure.
Yeah.
But you know, I don't think that. I think there are some things that women could do differently, but I don't think that you necessarily need a strategy for women because I think if you use the techniques that also work for men, why wouldn't they work for women? You know, as long as you're able to kind of keep certain things in check, like the exclamation points and not being too overtly smiley and smiling is definitely not a bad thing.
Yeah, not at all. I have to force myself to smile. I don't smile enough.
You force yourself to smile?
Well, I used to.
You know, it's really sad it is sad.
It is sad. Now I'm weeping inside. Actually, I'm not smiling. I'm like a clown.
I want to be.
Don't do that. I actually. When I was learning how to interview, it was through scholarships for college. And I would go to all these interviews, and I remember there was this one girl who was like, honestly, I was better than her. And we would see each other at every scholarship interview, and we would never say hi because we hated each other, even though I didn't know who she was. And she would win all these scholarships, and I would think I had a great presentation. I was pretty personable. And finally, after losing five or six or seven, I was like, okay, I gotta really practice my interviewing skills. And after analyzing myself on camera and having my parents interview me, the one weakness, the huge weakness was I didn't smile enough. And so I started smiling. Like, I'm like a smiley guy with my friends. But when I got to the interview, I was like. And I started smiling and I started winning left and right. And that was what it took for me.
And that is one of your tips for me as well. You know, we got to our interview prep, and the first round, I was just completely stiff. I was dry, not myself at all. And then we did the second round, and one of the things you were telling me is that you, you know, be more personable. So smile and not. Don't be afraid to tell stories and joke around.
Joke around.
Not, you know, not in the normal. Not in your kind of humor. I wouldn't do that.
You couldn't pull it off. Don't try it.
I couldn't pull that. Not that many people can pull that off in an interview.
I agree. Tell me more. Tell me more about my unique sense of humor.
I definitely wouldn't swear during the interview.
True starters, you may be right.
