Tag Archive for Jokes

During The Interview

by  • March 6, 2013 • 0 Comments

Don’t be thrown off by the office set-up, as it might be created to put you at a disadvantage. For example, the chair provided for you might be shorter than the interviewees and a large desk might separate you from them. Don’t concern yourself with this, as everyone else will be viewed with the same conditions. Try your best to seem comfortable in whatever position you happen to be in. Keep your legs uncrossed and flat on the floor with your hands in your lap. Keep your back straight and head up and lean toward the interviewer slightly. Always hit on the averages, not too much and not too little. This goes for everything, appear relaxed, but not too relaxed, use gestures, but not too often and so forth. If the interviewer seems uptight, don’t try to loosen them up with jokes or banter but if they seem personable, or in the mood, it can be advantageous to discuss interests and hobbies. Office photographs can be great links to common interests to help build rapport. If a direct question is asked, answer directly, don’t appear to waste time with the interviewer. Try your best to maintain flow between the communication style of the interviewer and yourself. If they speak quickly, don’t try to keep up, but don’t lag behind either. It’s always better to speak a little bit slower and more confidently than speaking faster than your mind can think.

Maintain good eye contact while speaking and while listening allow for some periods when eye contact is broken. Never cut off the interviewer and offer plenty of cues that you understand what is being said. Speak slowly and confidently and never more than thirty seconds at a time. Nods and approval sounds such as “mhum” makes the interviewer know that you comprehend what is being said and the research shows us that this is important even for high status individuals. If you are genuinely confused by what is said tilt your head to the side to make a query face. If this body language doesn’t yield clarifying information from the interviewer, then ask to hear the information again, as it shows that you are keenly interested in learning more about the work.

To measure your success throughout the interview watch for eye contact, smiling and nodding. The research show us that successful applicants get twice as much eye contact, three times more smiling and twice as much head nodding as unsuccessful ones. Use this information to build your confidence or to ramp up your pitch if things aren’t going well.

Laughing Cycle, Laughing Makes People Laugh

by  • March 5, 2013 • 0 Comments

Laughter, it is no surprise, is very contagious. When we hear laughter we often take part, or at the very least, crack a smile. When we get really caught up in laughter the cycle continues in an open loop circuit, perpetuating itself until we are unable to breath or are in tears.

Consider the events of 1962 where an outbreak of laughter in Tanganyika Tanzania. It started at a small boarding school where twelve to eighteen year old school girls started a six month long bout of laughter. The laughter was so severed the school had to be temporarily closed, but upon its closure, the children carried the infectious laughter to other parts where it spread to other communities. While certain logistics makes it impossible to endure such a long bout of laughter, particularly because it makes eating and sleeping impossible, let alone the acuteness of loss of breath and dizziness which would occur, it still helps illustrates the infectiousness of the laugh that we have all experienced.

The addition of laugh tracks to television situational comedies is another artifact of our desire to join in with laughter. If you have ever watched a similar comedy absent of the track or a studio audience, you will have noticed that it becomes obvious how important laughter is in the jokes effectiveness. Instinctively during a conversation or joke, we all know exactly the right time to laugh and even laugh, absent of anything else, still elicits laughter, showing just how pervasive it is.

The Types Of People You Will Read – Introverts Vs. Extroverts

by  • March 5, 2013 • 5 Comments

There are essentially two types of personalities that exist in the world around us. They are introverted and extroverted each type have a subset called “OK” and “Not OK” (which is discussed next). Introverted describes a personality that is inward thinking, they recover from life by being with themselves and reflecting. The will normally enjoy nature or a good book, prefer quiet areas where not a lot of people distract them. These people will often be found alone and prefer jobs that don’t involve a lot of people and that they can do independently. Being introverted doesn’t mean that a person is antisocial and it’s not a personality deficiency, it only means that someone is more comfortable being alone with their own thoughts than being in the spotlight. Extroverted people are the very opposite. They find social situations necessary and stimulating and “recharge” by hanging out with friends or going out. The like being in busy places like malls or city cores, in acting outwardly and garnering attention through telling jokes or acting funny.

Physiologists now believe that there is an actual physical difference between the nervous system of introverts and extroverts. Introverts are more easily stimulated by social interactions and quickly become oversaturated to the point where they become agitated and feel a need to withdraw. Extroverts can’t find enough stimulation and constantly need to find people to be around, and socialize with, and use social contact to feel satisfied. How you use your time most often will tell you which of the two personality types you are. With every classification, there are variants however, and people can be a mix of the two or can fall in at the extremities.

The body language of introverts in public places will be rigid; they will zone out more quickly or find quiet places and park themselves. They are at ease being alone even when at parties and might even take breaks away from the noise to ‘chill out’. They’ll spend more time at home and less time in nightclubs. The nonverbal language of the introvert will show more closed body positions. Their shoulders will pull in, they will orient their bodies away from others, they might be less animated and they will often be the first to stop speaking and resort to listening or observing others instead. They might even keep their distance more frequently, be soft spoken, initiate touch on others less and avoid eye contact. Extroverts are the opposite and tend to spontaneously turn toward people, they will start up conversations with random people, they will touch more in conversation and talk more frequently to keep the conversation going. They’ll use more gestures in speech in attempts to draw attention to themselves and generally take up more space. They will also tend to move about a room more and jump from person to person trying to get as much stimulation from others as possible. A quick test to verify extroversion from introversion is to watch how people break gaze. Generally speaking an introvert will break their gaze by looking to the right whereas extroverts will break their gaze to the left. This fact alone suggests that the differences we see between these two personality types has less to do with environment and more to do with how the brains are hardwired.

To work productively with the introverted, formulate groups as small as possible. For the introverted one on one represents the best scenario. Set up meetings in quiet areas with little distraction. Maintain as much space as possible, talk quietly, reduce eye contact, use touch infrequently or not at all. To work with the extroverted do the exact opposite. Talk louder with more expressions, touch frequently, be dynamic, move in closer, and give plenty of eye contact. Extreme extroverts and extreme introverts will be happiest at the end of their respective spectrum.

Above: Susan Cain on the power of introverts in TED talks.