How to Influence Interviews Using NLP
After working in the careers industry for many years I am shocked by how competitive each individual position is, with one national company recently had over 2000 applicants apply for a low-level position.
Job hunters have to step up their game and go above and beyond general interview techniques to win more job offers. One way to beat the competition is by using NLP to influence the job interview.
NLP is a great tool for influencing job interviews, as NLP isn’t just one technique it composes of a mixture of techniques that you can pull out of the bag when required and today I will share several of these techniques with you.
Rapport Building with Employers
Building good rapport is essential in the job interview as employers offer more jobs to people they like, in many cases with interviewers offering positions to people they like over more experienced applicants.
To gain rapport first find common ground with the interviewer, while the interviewer is having the initial chat with you designed to calm down nervous interviewees you can probe for what you have in common and then use this common ground to increase rapport. We have all heard candidates being picked because they wore the “old school tie”
We all communicate differently; the reason for this is due to the way we take in the information around us. Simply put we have a preference to one of our senses even though we use them all; auditory, visual or kinaesthetic. An interviewer will talk using words relating to their preferred sense which means to communicate effectively you can use their words to ensure your message sinks in.
- Visual people will us words such as; sight, see, picture, imagine, view
- Auditory people will use words such as; hear, sound, clear as a bell,
- Kinaesthetic people will use words such as; feel, touch, hard, warmth
You will realise the importance of using the interviewer’s language when you next try to get a point across to someone who just doesn’t understand what you mean. When this happens change your words to match their representational system and notice how they see things as clear as day.
The Employers Point of View
To win job offers you need to prepare. Where most people fail though is by not looking at the interview from the employer’s point of view. Instead of just memorizing your interview answers use your imagination to play out the interview from the employers viewpoint – imagine you as the employer interviewing yourself, notice how you sit, notice your posture and become aware of everything that makes up the employers impression of you – how well do you answer questions, do you sound confident, do your answers ring true? Do you as the employer get a good feeling about the interviewee? What is your first gut feeling? Do you feel warm or cold towards this person? Use this inside knowledge to improve your interview techniques, look for both your strength and your areas of development.
Confidence in a Job Interview
To win any job interview you need to feel confident. At an interview, you need to be able to access confidence in a few seconds. A great way to access confidence is by using an NLP anchor, an NLP anchor will allow you to trigger as positive emotion such as confidence when required.
To build a trigger, I want you to think about 5 past events or activities when you felt really confident. In your mind I want you to play out each event as if you are there now – seeing the event from your own eyes, as you play out this movie turn up the sound and make the picture bigger and brighter until you feel fully associated with it.
As you do this, you start to relive that positive feeling, let the confidence feeling grow stronger and stronger in your body until it’s at its peak and then squeeze your finger and thumb together as you do this imagine all the confidence from around your body rushing towards the squeezed fingers at the speed of light.
Do this with all 5 past activities. Afterward, test your trigger by squeezing your finger and thumb together, if it has been successful you should feel confident as soon as your squeezed fingers touch. Now you can use this trigger to access a confident feeling just before your job interview.
This is just a quick sample of how NLP can be used in job interviews but to really master influencing the interview, you can read the new book The 73 rules for influencing the interview using psychology, NLP and hypnotic persuasion techniques.
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