Healthy Influence Blog

You might recall my post on general guidelines for winning job interviews with persuasion.  I gave you five pointers:

1.  It’s about the other guy, not you.

2.  SOLER shows the other guy’s attention and liking.

3.  Monitor and manipulate WATTage, arguments and cues.

4.  Provide strong arguments from the other guys perspective.

5.  Use SOLER to assess both WATTage and evaluative reactions.

I focus now on SOLER.  Since SOLER directly appears in two of the pointers and runs quietly in the background for a couple of others, it’s worth more time, attention, and thought.

SOLER is an acronym for a set of nonverbal behaviors people display during interactions that indicates their cognitive and evaluative responding.  When someone shows all five, you feel a great deal of warmth, interest, and involvement from them, so the SOLER-SOLAR wordplay is most appropriate.  People range from hot to cold with

Squarely face
Open posture
Lean in
Eye contact
Relaxed

Now, quickly, of course, and here’s your gold star:  SOLER is not an absolute marker.  People can control SOLER behaviors and thus can manipulate you with them.  There’s not a woman walking this Earth who has not been fooled into thinking some fella will love her in the morning because he appeared so interested, sincere, and warm – SOLER.  Part of becoming an adult is learning to distinguish between the real and the image and you need that same skill with SOLER whether you’re meeting an interesting new person in a bar or, more to our purposes here, an interesting new job interviewer on the other side of the desk.

Consider these photos of me interviewing the kitten, Zeus.  (Hey, and don’t think these were staged.  We conduct a rigorous interview process with all the cats we bring into this household.  Of course, there’s no suspense here because you know Zeus triumphed at the interview and is now our Persuasion Kit.  He joins Rocket who handles Advanced Napping and Demon-Flynn who runs Enforcement, Terror, and Surprise.)

Virtually any unimpaired human past the age of consent can see the difference between the various photos.  Using the SOLER guidelines, however, you can now more clearly understand why some shots look warm and others look cold.  See the change in body lean and orientation, eye contact, and tension.  You clearly see the evaluative, do-I-like-it-or-not posture that marks the person’s attitudinal response.  With SOLER as attitude you can metaphorically think of hot-cold image.

Now, let’s extend SOLER from the obvious “body as attitude” indicator to “body as cognition” indicator.  Generally speaking when humans are interested, engaged, and thoughtful about something, their SOLER will change.  Again, generally speaking a high WATT processor will also tend to look high SOLER.  The mind controls the body and when the mind is interested (high WATT) the body demonstrates it.  With SOLER as cognition you can metaphorically think of spotlight-floodlight image.

Again, here’s your gold star – no, SOLER is not a universal, fail-safe, always works marker.  It is a general tendency, a habitual response, often automatic and spontaneous when it springs from an open and free person.  You need to continuously read the other person to tell when the SOLER is authentic and when it is manipulated.

During an interview you want to observe the SOLER behavior of the interviewer.  Now, good interviewers know about their nonverbal behavior and consciously work to control it to maintain a constant performance across all interviews.  But, they can’t control it in all instances.  Their SOLER will vary even when they don’t want it to.  (That’s what makes human nature, natural; try as we might we are not perfect.)  Look for these variations and try to correlate them to your communication.  Hey, did she just lean in as you told her about that elite internship?  Talk about the experience more and see if she gets more SOLER.  If she does, you’ve probably just delivered a Strong Argument and scored points for your application.  By contrast, if your extended narrative about the internship leads her to turn away from you and cross her arms, smoothly change the topic.

You also want to monitor and control your own SOLER behaviors.  As a general goal you want to maintain a high SOLER orientation throughout the interview.  Just as you can be too rich, too thin, or too good looking in life, during an interview you can’t be too interested, too alert, or too involved.  I can’t help you with the first three advantages, but SOLER clearly runs through the second three.

Practice it.  Learn how to sit in a chair and be comfortably SOLER for ten minutes while conversing.  Videotape yourself or sit in front of a mirror and pretend.  Get a partner you trust to play the interviewer and ask that partner to monitor your SOLER.  Just practice.

One disconcerting discovery you will make on almost every interview is that you cannot maintain SOLER.  You will dim.  Some interviewer will ask you a question or make comment that presses a magic button in you.  More likely, you will suddenly realize that you are slouching in your chair and slightly turned away from the interviewer.  When this happens, don’t panic.  Just adjust your skirt or straighten your tie and go SOLER again.  Practice.

Realize that SOLER is a persuasion skill.  Read the SOLERs of the interviewer to determine their cognitive and evaluative state.  Usually high SOLER interviewers are high WATT (meaning they are thinking and want your strongest job arguments) and are favorably disposed (they like you and what you are saying).  Show SOLER yourself to demonstrate that you are a hot spotlight, feeling good about the interview and the interview while also being focused and interested.

P.S. You might like this related job interviewing post.

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