[MUSIC] Hi everyone welcome back. So now that we've reviewed branding, and components of your personal brand, and how that's connected to reflection and opportunity, and your trait affective presence. Let's now look at performance and specifically an interview. And this interview scenario is really a moment of crucial impression management. And the moment where your trait affective presence is most important. So, the impact of your personal brand, the unique you, how that unique you stacks up against your competitors, creates possibilities for new opportunities. That's most typically expressed in some kind of performance whether it's on the job or in an interview. And performance, like personal branding, really is goal oriented so in the case of an interview the goal is to either secure a job or perhaps gain information or insight into an industry profession via maybe an informational interview. And in past lessons, we've discussed a few types of interviews. Some are competency based, some are behavioral, wherein you're asked to respond to a given task right in the moment so that your skill set can be assessed. We know that interviews are important and while reflecting about your own brand, how to build it, how to maintain it, how to grow it. That might align you with how an organization will likely assess you. And research shows that we're not always clear about the factors that can influence an interviewer's perception of performance in an interview setting. So Huffcutt, Iddekinge and Roth list several potential factors that might impact how an interviewee is perceived. Many of them are what you would expect but let's list a few of them. So one is the experience of the interviewee. Are you making eye contact? Do you appear to be nervous, do you appear confident? Are you relaxed? Is your affect, how you present yourself, and your perceived emotional state appropriate to the setting? Another factor can be the actual design of the interview, whether it's formal or informal. Another can be the medium. So is the interview face to face, is it virtual, is it by phone? We can imagine that virtual and by phone are increasingly prominent given our global marketplace. And then given all of these factors how can you prepare for each? If this is your first interview it might be a really good idea to practice in advance with someone you trust. If you're a seasoned interviewee, you might want to read up on the latest interviewing strategies in your occupation. You should know the type of interview you're going to have. Is it formal, will you be meeting a lot of people on one day, or is the interview spread out over a number of days? Will you be given a formal presentation? Will you be expected to give a formal presentation? Or is the interview more conversation based and informal with a lot of give and take between you and the interviewer. It would be really helpful if you can find answers to these questions before the interview so you know how to best prepare. And the other piece of it is, we mentioned these different modalities. How can you differently prepare for an interview depending on the modality in which it will happen? How can you project your unique brand no matter the setting? So, if you're on the phone for example, you would want to of course take that call in a quiet setting, eliminate distractions. Maybe have a pen handy to take some notes and so forth. And then there is the old adage and it is true, I've done phone interviews. If you're doing a phone interview, smile. People can actually hear a smile over the phone and it will project in your voice. So then we can also wonder how interviewers perceive their own impression, and strategies during an interview. So what do they think about their ability to judge you? And research again tells us that interviewers might absolutely overestimate their own abilities to quote see through a candidates impression management strategies. Which is not to say those strategies are disingenuous but merely to acknowledge that your public unique brand is one that employers will be interested in investigating. In terms of its consistency its value and really looking for supports to back the claims that you're making through that brand. So during an interview, Yousef and other researchers, suggest that there are certain performance factors used for appraisal of the interview. And these include, ability and expertise, how a candidate is perceived to comply with organizational culture and policies. Including timeliness of work, readiness for responsibilities, and potential to develop. If you come in at a lower level, you want to move up through the ranks and that organization. How cooperative do you appear? How do we imagine you might connect and work with other colleagues on the job? How creative do you appear? Do you appear to be ready to learn and try new things? You'll recall our early lesson about reflection and keeping your brand fresh. And this idea directly connects to how you might position yourself as a life long on the job learner. You want to be someone ready to take on new responsibility and learn. And these concepts also connect to the trait affective presence. The Eisenkraft and Elfenbein study conclude two very important points for you to understand as it's related to your career fitness. So the first is that there's really strong evidence to suggest that there are what they call partner effects. And these are the behaviors and feelings you elicit in others the emotional footprint you leave behind. When you leave an interview setting the footprint you want to leave of course is one of friendly, competent, open, and a confident candidate. And let's really think about the interview as a little bit of a theatrical performance. This is not to say that you're disingenuous during the interview, but to some degree, a unique personal brand is like trying out for a role in a play. The play happens to be an organization for which you wish to work, the role of course you hope to have is one for which you practice, you've done some research. But ultimately you're presenting your brand's unique interpretation of that role. Your audience, the individual or individuals doing the interview, they rate your performance, they're going to make a determination about how well you interpreted their idea of that role. Two, and again this is perhaps somewhat intuitive, but it bears repeating. They conclude that individuals who bring out more positive feelings tend to be more popular among peers and those who leave a negative emotional footprint contributed to the quote, bad apple syndrome, right? So those people who are perceived to have such a negative effect, that they brought down groups of co-workers. And that is definitely not the way to engage in successful impression management or personal branding. So what have we learned? We've learned that your trade effective behavior contributes to the emotional footprint you leave behind in an interview setting. Personal branding and impression management are the vehicles by which you can guide the interpretation of this footprint and you always, always want to most positively and enthusiastically showcase your unique advantage over those with whom you compete for a position.
