A Lethal Weapon to Boost Your Chances of Getting a Job: Social Proof

We often talk about  how to deliver effective performances, showcasing our skills or taking control of  job interviews.

I’ve also said before, that interviews are short and those minutes are all the time that we have to make our point; and all the time the interviewer has to get to know you and your capabilities.

Adding insult to injury, on top of interviews being limited in time, the time it takes an interviewer to make a decision about your viability is even shorter:

But what if you could keep the recruiter or hiring manager thinking about you after the interview is over?

What if you could have yourself working after the fact to pull up from a “failed” interview without moving a finger?

What if you could keep making your case after you are gone from the manager’s office?

Making this possible is today’s tip.

What you’ll need:

• Time
• Email account
• Printer
• Folder

Except for the first item, I don’t think you’ll have much trouble getting the other 3.

The idea behind all this is to make a strong selling point by using social proof, also known as informational social influence, which is a psychological phenomenon where people assume the actions of others reflect correct behavior for a given situation. It’s driven by the assumption that surrounding people possess more knowledge about the situation [thank you for the definition, Wikipedia].

Most of us like trophies. We also like having them in a visible place for others to see.

At work, your trophies are your productivity numbers, results and praise from those who work with/for you.

If you are like me, you like keeping that praise in a folder within your mailbox. But I don’t keep these as a private collection, I put them to good use. Right after every job interview, I hand the interviewer a folder with a selection of those emails -from supervisors,  co-workers and supervisees- saying good stuff about me and my work.

For example, some of the categories that I have are Teamwork, Compliance, Staff Turnover, Proactivity and Productivity.

Heads up: always remember to strike through (with marker) sensitive, personal or protected information.

Simply put, the folder serves 2 goals:

• Providing social proof about my performance and relationship with co-workers
• A positive reinforcement after the interview

Human memory works in mysterious ways, although some of them are well understood: given a chunk of information -say, 20 numbers- a person will more easily remember the first and last items but will have trouble remembering the ones in the middle.

A job interview is no different: first and last impressions will be the most important ones. A folder with positive information about you will -likely- leave a sweet taste in the interviewer’s memory and boost your chances of scoring that job you are seeking.

Article by Fernando

The guy in charge of this blog - husband, Psychologist, former Manager, Blogger, Job Coach, Recruiter and Information Junkie. Yes, I am all that.

Fernando has written 254 awesome articles for us at FT Careers

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