Power Boosters: How to Land That Job When You Think You Can’t
To land that dream job, adopt a
mindset that signals power, even if you don’t feel so powerful.
Candidates invest considerable
resources in the form of time or money to prepare for that interview that will
grant them entrance to their dream school or land them their dream job. In
these situations, candidates are often tempted to work on planning how the
interview will go and what they will say: why is my background relevant for
that job? How can I bring value to the company? Why do I want to work in this
industry?
While thinking of answers to these
questions is important, recent research suggests that what interviewers are
looking for is a specific mindset. In particular, what will persuade them
to hire you is whether you communicate a powerful mindset - one that signals
the candidate will be a great recruit. In the midst of a crisis, will you know
how to take the right action? When it comes to selling a product, will you
communicate enough enthusiasm to the client?
What is this “powerful” mindset
anyway and how we can acquire it? Here are two tips for candidates that will
make a difference in interview settings.
1.
“Think powerful”
Job candidates are rarely in a
position of power as interviewers decide the fate of their future career
prospects. Yet, the winning strategy in these situations is thinking that one
has power, in spite of the situation. As a candidate, how can you engineer a
powerful mindset? Well, a simple trick is to remind yourself about a time you
had power over a situation right before an interview, and invoke the precise
feelings associated with that memory – feelings of confidence and competence,
as well as decisiveness during decision making.
One of my recent research projects, Power gets the job: Priming power improves
interview outcomes co-authored with Joris Lammers
(University of Cologne), Derek D. Rucker (Northwestern University) and Adam
Galinsky (Columbia University) tested just that idea: as part of a session of
individual mock interviews, we assigned business school applicants to one of
three conditions. In the first condition, applicants wrote a short essay about
a time they had power just before entering an interview. In the second
condition, applicants also wrote an essay, but this time about a time they
lacked power. Finally, the last group did not write anything.
Then, we asked interviewers the
likelihood that they would accept the candidate into a business school. When
candidates went straight to the interview, interviewers accepted 47.1 percent
of the candidates. However, the admission rate went up to 68 percent for those
people in the group who wrote an essay about a time they had power, and fell to
a low 26 percent for those who wrote an essay about a time they lacked power.
Importantly, interviewers were unaware of the power manipulation we had given
candidates. Thus, merely recalling an experience of high power increased
candidates’ likelihood to be admitted by 81 percent compared to baseline and by
162 percent compared to those who recalled an experience of powerlessness.
Of course, there are other ways to
engineer personal feelings of power. For instance, candidates can wear objects
that make them feel powerful, such as a watch or a particular bag - anything
that links you with feelings of power.
2.
“Behave powerful”
Power is not only a mindset; it is
also a behaviour. Small, almost unconscious moves signal power to an audience
and can significantly change the outcome of an interview. In her recent TED talk,
Amy Cuddy (Harvard University) provides an excellent summary of how non-verbal
language can have a profound effect on how people are judged in contexts as
varied as hiring or promotion interviews, a sales context or even a date. As
such, physical poses such as wrapping legs, hunching or relying on one’s arms
are many subtle signals of powerlessness that cast doubt on what candidates
say, regardless of the content of the conversation.
The
Virtuous Circle of Power
Interestingly, adopting “power
poses” does not only affect how interviewers judge candidates, but also ironically
reinforces candidates’ feelings of power. In recent research,
Li Huang from INSEAD and colleagues had participants take powerful (for
example, expansive postures) or powerless (constricted postures) poses and
found the former behaved more powerfully than the latter, by taking action more
often and thinking more abstractly, two well-known consequences of power. So,
behaving in a powerful way is not only important for how interviewers perceive
candidates, it is also a key driver of how candidates will behave!
History is full of examples showing
that what really counts for the recipient of a message is the communicator’s
mindset, not their actual resources or power. During the early days of the
Second World War, Charles de Gaulle, today recognised as one of the great
wartime leaders, was an isolated general with a following of a few hundred
soldiers who refused to recognise the legitimacy of the Vichy government and fled
to London after the German invasion to set up a government-in-exile. During a
famous negotiation with Churchill, the British prime minister abruptly reminded
de Gaulle of his powerless position, noting that his organisation was only
surviving thanks to the goodwill and financial help of the allied forces:
“Anyway, who are you to represent France? You don’t even have an army!” But de
Gaulle, standing tall, straight, and direct, calmly retorted, “If I am not
France, then why are you talking to me?” Churchill was forced to sit down and
continue the negotiation. Interviewees, adopt the “de Gaulle” mindset!
By David
Dubois, Assistant Professor of Marketing, INSEAD http://knowledge.insead.edu/leadership-management/organisational-behaviour/power-boosters-how-to-land-that-job-when-you-think-you-cant-2433?utm_source=INSEAD+Knowledge&utm_campaign=efe05904f6-INSEAD_Knowledge_April_Newsletter_4_5_2013&utm_medium=email
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