After having cleared cutoff percentile at MBA Institute, you will be invited for Personal interview and now it is must for you to practice with variety of Pi Tips.
Read and develop points for Pi Tips : Tips On Keeping Eye To Eye Contact
In a Personal Interview (PI), what you say is important, but of equal importance is how you say it. If you look at good orators adept in the art of public speaking, you will notice how their eyes establish contact with the audience. It is an important tool to hold the attention of your audience and keep their interest alive. In PI, eye contact is a sign of confidence and an assertive personality but too much of it can be seen as a threatening sign. So, the candidates need to get this just right in order to make the right impression.
Sign of confidence
If you are confident and believe in yourself, there are more chances of you looking up into the eyes of the interviewers automatically. A candidate who is not confident and sure of himself will hesitate to maintain eye contact with the interviewers, instead, will look more down than up. And by doing this, he gives an upper hand to the interviewers who will use this shortcoming to grill the candidate and perhaps knock him out.
Listen intently
An excellent way of maintaining eye contact with the interview panel is to listen to them intently. When you listen to somebody with complete focus, you will frequently establish eye contact with them because you are interested in what they are saying. Also, when you listen intently, you will be in a better position to reply and the interview will then become more of a conversation, which will reflect well on you as a candidate.
Acknowledge everybody on the panel
It is not advisable that you maintain eye contact with only a specific person(s) in the panel.
This may even appear rude as it means that you are only interested in talking to a particular person(s) and the others may feel ignored. Therefore, candidates must divide the movement of their eyes equally among the interviewers. For instance, if a person on the panel puts up a question to you, while replying, look but don’t stare in his eyes. Break your eye contact and glance at the other people on the panel, to acknowledge them as well.
Don't stare
Candidates must not mistake maintaining eye contact with staring into the eyes of the panel. This will only disconcert the panel and will appear to be a threatening posture.
Fix your eyes on a nearby object
Some public speakers get nervous or distracted by maintaining eye contact with the audience for a long time. In such cases, what they do is that they fix their eyes on an object which may be in the direction of the audience or near their eyes. This helps them to speak without getting distracted by the movement in the audience. Similarly, if the candidates find it unsettling to maintain eye contact with the interviewers, they should identify any object near the eyes of the interviewers, and at the same height as their eyes, so that the nervousness is removed and the interviewers don’t fee; offended.
Practice
Lastly, practice is the key to master this aspect of the interview. During the mock sessions to prepare for the interview, the candidates must observe themselves or ask others to observe them and tell them if their eyes are up or down and the frequency of their eye movement. They can even record their eye movements during the mock interviews and then, make a conscious effort to improve this aspect.
Advice for candidates
Realise the importance of maintaining regular eye contact with the entire panel and also the harm in overdoing it. Master this with precision and you will give yourself a good chance in the interview.
Read 65+ Personal Interview Tips here
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