“I’ve learned that people will forget what you said,
and forget what you did, but people will never forget how you made them
feel.” Poet
and author Maya Angelou
It’s
February and we associate this month with our hearts as we recognize Valentine’s
Day, honor love, and celebrate lovers. With
a nod to these sweet activities, I want to take a different path and
talk with those of you who are on a job search. I want to discuss the hidden power
of your heart and the remarkable role it plays in job interviews.
First, some very simplified definitions: When I refer to heart
power, I mean that your heart is the seat of your emotions, the container that
holds such spiritually charged feelings such as compassion, forgiveness, and
empathy, and it has an intelligence which rivals that of your brain. The heart communicates more often with your
brain than vice versa, and it is 5,000 times more powerful (to learn more, see The Heart’s Code by Paul Pearsall or
visit www.heartmath.org).
The heart is beating in a
Human Energy Field, a fluid world of radiating energy, continuously moving and
changing like the ocean. Modern science
tells us that human beings are made up of molecules and magnetic energy. These
can be measured as electrical currents in the heart (with an EEG) and as
magnetic fields around the body (with SQUID which stands for superconducting
quantum device). Everyone has an energy
field that broadcasts emotions much like radio waves broadcast sounds to an
audience. (To learn more, I refer you to
Hands of Light by Barbara Brennan.)
With these understandings
in place, let’s consider how your heart influences your feelings about an
organization during an interview, how the hiring official’s heart influences feelings
toward you during an interview, and the combined effect of both hearts on the
hiring decision.
How your heart
influences feelings toward an organization during an interview
Some career experts estimate that it takes experienced recruiters approximately 90 seconds to form a first impression by scanning a resume. If that initial assessment is positive, candidates are then invited to come in for a face to face interview. The average interview
lasts 45 minutes. Not a lot of time,
but enough for you and your interviewer to make a major decision about whether
or not you will be invited back.
Interviewing is stressful, so your heart is probably beating faster than
usual during interviews. This means that you will be paying attention to what
is happening in the interview but also coping with a rise in stress hormones,
doing more shallow breathing than usual, and experiencing an elevated blood
pressure. In short, you will be in the
fight or flight mode.
Your heart has intelligence, and is a second brain in your body; it will pick up the interviewer’s energetic signals that typically operate below your conscious level of awareness. Your heart will help you make a preliminary assessment
of the interviewer’s energy – to determine if it is positive or negative. Because the interviewer represents a company,
your heart‘s assessment will also influence your perception of the organization
that employs him or her. (We’re all
familiar with this process: we go into a store, someone waits on us who is
really fun and nice to talk to, and we walk out later feeling good about the
store for having hired such a great employee.)
How the hiring official’s
heart influences feelings toward you during an interview
The hiring official’s
heart is busy, too, receiving your energetic signals and interpreting your
energy as positive or negative. The official
does not have an easy role; in fact he or she is quite worried about making a poor hiring decision. This is a costly
mistake, a waste of training and orientation resources, and is not easily
undone. As a result, the official’s
heart is most likely beating faster than usual, blood pressure is rising and
while the conscious brain is attending to managing the interview successfully,
the brain in the heart is analyzing and assessing whether or not you are a risk
worth taking.
The impact of both of
your hearts on the hiring decision
The decision-making journey culminates through the following process:
·
On the energetic
level the hiring official’s heart experiences your energy field and this
contributes data to his or her powers of perception that confirms or negates
the earlier first impression based on your resume.
·
On the energetic level
your heart experiences the energy field
of the hiring official and this data either confirms or negates the first impression
you formed from the job ad and the phone call made to invite you for an interview.
·
On the material
world level you are both engaged in observing
the appropriate social skills of shaking hands, exchanging pleasantries about
innocuous things like the weather and traffic, and noticing one another’s body language,
eye contact and voice tones. Questions related to the job and your previous work history are asked and answers are given and weighed against criteria known to the interviewer but not to you. How well
you each do these things – the degree to which you are poised or awkward –
contributes more data to the decision making process each of you is compiling.
·
On the intuitive
level both of you are sensing if there is a good match for the job and
the organizational culture. Silent, internal questions
are being answered by the interviewer such as “Do I like this person?” and “Would this person fit
into our way of doing things?” and “Would the team be comfortable with this
person?” Silent, internal questions are being answered by you such as “Do I like this person?” and “Do I want to work here?”and “Can I imagine myself being happy in this environment?”
By the end of the interview a decision has been made in the hiring
official’s mind and heart to either invite you back or to end the interview,
thanking you for your time. Likewise, by the end of the interview your mind and heart have also made a decision to either accept an invitation to proceed further or to thank the interviewer for the opportunity while expressing your belief that you are not the right candidate for the job. It has
taken about 45 minutes.
Human beings are a
combination of intricate systems that include an energy field, a brain with
intelligence, a second brain in our hearts that also has intelligence, five
senses that report data, and a sixth sense that reports intuitive knowledge. Many of us are largely unaware of how effectively and efficiently these work together in decision-making. It is also interesting to note that once we’ve made a decision the logical, rational part of the brain between our ears
will eagerly confirm the validity of our decision, and defend it to anyone who may
question it. That’s the way we are
wired.
So, this February, thank
your heart for its wisdom and its ability to work so well with your other
brain, your senses and your intuition.
It is truly a Valentine’s gift every day of the year.
