3 Ways Women Can Wow

Published today on the Downtown Women’s Club blog:

While there’s no doubt in my mind that men and women are created equal, I am equally sure that they are created different—after all, a cup of flour and a cup of sugar are equal in amount but have very different properties.

With this in mind, I offer the following female-oriented career advice:

1. Because women have naturally higher voices, it’s particularly important to ensure we’re speaking from our diaphragms, as a lower voice projects far greater authority. To check if you are, place your hand on your abdomen while you speak. If you’re hand’s not moving in and out as you talk, your diaphragm’s not engaged. An easy way to practice engaging it is to lie on the floor with a heavy book on your stomach and breathe deeply until the book is moving up and down. When you stand up, your voice will have dropped about an octave.

2. I want everyone—male or female– to be aware of how they are taking up space. In my experience, men tend to take up more space—leaning back in their chairs, interlacing their fingers behind their head, spreading their knees apart– while women often make ourselves smaller—shrinking back in our chairs, folding our hands in our laps, crossing our legs. With this in mind, consider others’ posture and attitudes in your next meeting. Then consider your own. If you’re sitting back with your hands in your lap while others are leaning forward, move to the front of your seat, sit up very straight, lean in, and place your hands flat on the table to indicate accessibility.

3. Listening without interrupting is a vastly underrated skill set– and interruptions come in many forms. As women, we often interrupt by agreeing and encouraging—saying things along the lines of “Exactly!” “Of course!”  or“I know what you mean!” The trouble with this is that it has the potential to interrupt others’ thought patterns. What can you do instead? Practice signaling your encouragement and agreement via non-verbal techniques: by leaning in, nodding your head, and smiling.

Frances Cole Jones is the President of Cole Media Management and author of “How to Wow: Proven Strategies for Selling Your (Brilliant) Self in any Situation” and “The Wow Factor: The 33 Things You Must (and Must Not) Do to Guarantee Your Edge in Today’s Business World.” She also has an App for the iPhone/iPad called “Interview Wow” You can send her a note at www.thewowfactor-thebook.com.

Show Me, Don’t Tell Me

As you may know, the first rule of writing good fiction is, “Show me don’t tell me.” The idea being that you can’t say a character is resilient, thoughtful, or brave you need to show the reader that he or she is these things.

Somehow this idea has not translated into our other writing, particularly in the context of applying for jobs. For example, how many of us have seen cover letters in which a candidate describes him or herself, “a real go getter,” only to have that resume collecting dust on our desk three weeks later—three weeks during which that “go-getter” of a candidate didn’t pick up the phone?

How else might a go-getter distinguish him/her self from the pack? Well, recently I walked out of Grand Central Station to find two young people dressed in business suits standing on the sidewalk handing out copies of their resumes. What were their stated objectives? Entry-level jobs in finance and marketing. Their qualifications? The usual for people just starting out—captain of the swim team, internship at local retail store, a summer at the local copy shop. In addition to hard copies of their resume, however, they had also blown each up to a poster-board size and created video resumes and posted them on YouTube—the URL for these was at the top of their CV’s.  Seeing these actions told me more than any video: they were creative, gutsy, and self-confident. You can bet that if I had been at a financial or marketing firm with—or without—an opening, they would have been hired on the spot. They brought being a ‘go-getter’ to life.

Another gap in candidates’ descriptions of themselves is often revealed via a technique I recently heard HR professionals are using to weed out those who are truly committed to working for a particular firm from those who are not: what they do is stop the interview halfway through and says “I just don’t think you’re the right fit for us”—regardless of the candidate’s experience. One of the HR professionals with whom I spoke says it’s amazing how many people actually say, “I actually didn’t think so either, but I just thought I’d come in…”

Um…how not to wow.

How do I recommend you handle this situation, should you encounter it? First, make sure you don’t look down, lean back….reveal your discomfort through your body in any way.Smile. Inhale. Speak on an exhalation. Say, “I understand how you may think that, given my lack of experience with X/my checkered past/how long I’ve been freelancing, but I think you’ve underestimated how committed I am to working for your firm. If I may, I’ll take you through my thinking one more time.” A response that, both physically, and verbally, should reassure the most hardboiled of HR professionals.

Another misstep I heard about was the story of a candidate who touted his laser focus/unparalleled dedication throughout his lunch interview, only to take out his PDA and begin returning calls as his host paid the check. My guess is that he was either uncomfortable with sitting in silence, or wished to convey his busyness/importance. What I can tell you is that his choice backfired– instead causing the HR director to move him from the top slot to the bottom of the list.

Albert Schweitzer, the famed theologian/philosopher/physician said, “Example is not the main thing in influencing others. It is the only thing.”  Nowhere is this truer than in a job interview scenario—where what isn’t said is often far more important than what is.

Frances Cole Jones

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WOW– It’s a Paperback!

I’m proud to announce the release of the paperback of The Wow Factor: The 33 Things You Must (and Must Not) Do to Guarantee Your Edge in Today’s Business World available today at your favorite book retailer. Please pick up your copy today!

WOW– It’s a Paperback, posted with vodpod

WOW Videos on iTunes

I’m happy to announce my WOW video series is now LIVE on iTunes. Subscribe to my video podcast series direct from iTunes!

Announcing the Interview Survival Kit App

I’m very happy to announce that my new Interview Survival Kit app is now available as a FREE downloadable app for the iPhone, iPod Touch and iPad.

Complete with six different job interview scenario videos (who hasn’t had that passive aggressive interviewer? Or encountered the too-cool-for-school interviewee?) the nine questions (and answers!) you must research beforehand; answers to the worst five questions you can imagine getting; and a 72-hour pre-interview checklist/countdown clock, the Interview Survival Kit ensures you will be calm and confident, no matter what the situation.

Key Features

• iOS 4 / iPhone 4 Ready!
• Video examples demonstrate situation handling
• Alert Notifications organize your planning with a 72 hour step-by-step countdown
• Research Roundup give you the top questions to consider
• SNAP! Answers to tough questions help you ace any interview.

Happy downloading– I look forward to your thoughts!

Sincerely,
Frances

The All-Important Informational Interview

When I was thinking about switching professions, from teaching to publishing, I kept going on interviews and striking out, and I couldn’t figure it out. There had to be something I was doing incorrectly, but what was it? To discover, I began going on informational interviews—setting up meetings with people whom I would have loved to have as bosses, but who weren’t looking for help. This turned out to be how I made the jump.

The purpose of an informational interview is to find out both what companies in your field is looking for and—just as importantly—what they are not. Also, to discover what their concerns might be from looking at you, and your resume.

The fact that the interview is informational doesn’t mean you don’t have to prep just as carefully as you would if there were a job at stake. In addition to knowing your interviewer’s resume inside and out, you should have a list of questions you’d like to have answered:

1. Are there any immediate red flags you see when you look at my resume?
2. Are there any skills I should fine tune?
3. Are there any new trends in the industry I should be aware of?

Additionally, information interviews are a great place to find out what not to say as well as what you should say—because every industry has one question you can ask, or statement you can make, that just drives people wild.

(For example, when I worked in publishing that phrase was, “And I know my book would be great on Oprah.” Aaaaauugh. I mean, their book might very well be great on Oprah—but getting your book on Oprah is a bit like getting struck by lightning. The effect of a prospective author saying this was only to make everyone in the room think, “High maintenance. Back away slowly.”)

Now it might seem that people in these positions don’t have the time or energy to give to these interviews. I rarely found this to be true. The people I know who’ve been shut down had opened with, “Let me take you to lunch.” While this is a lovely offer, people are busy so respect their time limits up front. Ask them, “May I come in to speak with you for fifteen minutes at the beginning or end of your day?”

Another benefit of this kind of interviewing is that if they are sufficiently impressed with you, they will have you in mind when someone in their field is looking to hire a new person for their team.

Informational interviews are a win/win/win—and all those wins are for you. You get the experience of interviewing, you get the information, and you get the future connection.

Frances Cole Jones

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