You’ve convinced yourself the big interview is just a conversation, you’ve planned out your narrative – the points you want to make during the course of the chat – and you’ve got your offstage beat down.  What do you actually do to get things off on the right foot?

Most people have been told, by their parents or perhaps a well-intentioned grandparent, that you should shake people firmly by the hand and look them straight in the eye.  That leads to a whole host of introductions during which the two hapless inductees madly break the bones in each others’ hands and glare at each other fixedly, afraid to be the first to look away. 

Of course you should make reasonable eye contact, and of course your handshake should be somewhere in the middle of the scale between bone crusher and dead fish.  Beyond that, though, it begins to get interesting.  It’s the rest of the body that creates the impression, and it’s with the rest of the body that you don’t want to send the wrong message.

You’re probably nervous, perhaps a bit shy, maybe a bit desperate, and all of those feelings can come through in a myriad little adjustments that your body makes in space relative to your interviewer.  You can address this problem in one of two ways.  Either work on your inside – get the feeling of openness and connection in your gut and focus on that strongly – or your outside.  From the outside, you concentrate on keeping your torso relatively still and pointed toward the other person, without blocking it off with any nervous gestures of your hands and arms. 

Either way can work; you just have to decide which method makes most sense to you.  Either think to yourself, I really, really want to be open to this person; I feel comfortable and relaxed, like I’m talking to a close friend I’m very glad to see, or pay close attention to your torso and make sure that is pointed in the right direction. 

You should be making eye contact, but more than that, your face should be open and welcoming.  That means that your eyes open wide, your eyebrows go up (a little – too much and you’ll look really surprised), you’re smiling – all the things you do unconsciously when you meet a close friend you haven’t seen in a while. 

That’s how to handle the initial meeting.  Next time I’ll cover the rest of the interview.