Communication skills

This is the way you present yourself in an interview, this is important as it determines how successful interview is going to be. This includes looking the part, listening during the interview, maintaining eye contact with your interviewee and so on. Communication skills include:

  • Building Rapport
  • Active Listening
  • Body Language

Building Rapport
This building trust and understanding with your interviewee using body language and questions. This helps you to create a good relationship between you and your interviewee which is important so as to get them talking. This involves emotional mirroring, mirroring your interviewee's body language, leaning in in a subtle way while listening it to them and nodding while they talk to encourage them to keep going. In the video below, we can see Oprah Winfery mirroring Kim Kardarshian's posture, sitting with her legs crossed. She also gave Kim nods as she was responding. This is a very good example of building rapport as we can see Kim revealing her deepest feeling about her road to fame. How humiliated she was when her sex tape leaked and how she can't stop thinking about what she'll tell her kids in the future. This revelation can be attributed to good rapport as she wouldn't have said those things if she didn't trust or have a good relationship with the interviewer.

Strengths of Building Rapport.
Building a good rapport means getting as much as possible from your interviewee as they find it easy to trust you. A good one is emotional mirroring, which means empathizing with the interviewee's emotional state allowing them to confide in you. Matching their tone and tempo also creates goo rapport as it will calm them down and open up to you.

Weakness 
When building rapport, it is essential to be subtle. For instance, if your interviewee notices you're mimicking their posture or tone of voice, they might get upset and misunderstand your actions. They might take it as though you're mocking them. In the video above we can see Oprah mirroring Kim's crossed legs but not her hand position making it subtle.

Active Listening 
This involves listening to your interviewee when they respond to your questions and asking a question that follows the response they have just given. This shows them you're interested in what they are saying which encourages them to say more. It also involves nodding and smiling (if appropriate) while they talk. In the video below, we can see Oprah nodding and smiling to Kim while she went into detail about her relationship with Kanye West. She encouraged her to keep talking as she showed her she was listening.

Strengths of Active Listening
Active listening allows your interviewee to know they have your full attention and you're interested in what their saying. They feel welcomed and happy to have the interview with you.

Weakness
You need to actually listen to your interviewee and not just fake it, if you do you might try too hard and lose your clients trust.

Body Language 
Having a good body language is vital in an interview. Your body language must be professional, smart, confident and welcoming. During the interview, you must look at your interviewee and maintain good eye contact and never turn your back at them. All of these are done to create a good mood for the interview.

Strengths of Body Language
A good body language sets a good atmosphere and relaxes the interviewee. You show them you're in the mood for the interview encouraging them to do the same.

Weakness
The wrong body language can trigger your interviewee and jeopardize your whole interview. Turning your back at your interviewee is an example of a very bad body language which can upset your interviewee. A very good example of this is the video below showing Russell Harty turning his back on Grace Jones. This made her feel ignored which annoyed into using her hands against the interviewer, showing how worse wrong body language can make an interview. He went ahead to stick his hand in her face and interrupting her a couple times making the problem escalate even more.

Comments

  1. cdavies26 October 2017 at 02:32

    Excellent work precious. You have fully explained the importance of communication skills and the effect they they can have on the final interview. You use intelligent and relevant examples to demonstrate your points an have fully developed your responses and drawn them out to show the precise points you are making. You look at strengths and weaknesses and weigh these up in terms of interview outcomes. Excellent

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