Social Engineering Blogs

An Aggregator for Blogs About Social Engineering and Related Fields

The Humintell Blog November 15, 2021

8 CREDIBLE Steps To Become A Successful Interviewer

Written by Humintell Affiliate Jay Abiona of Credible Security Solutions

Have you ever conducted an interview and were unsure if the individual was being 100% honest? If so, then this article is for you!

We all know that the largest cost in any business is usually payroll. In order to have loyal, hardworking and HONEST team members, you need to hire appropriately.

As a business owner, we have an obligation to our clients to ensure the highest levels of integrity and that all starts with our team and who we hire.

This article will assist you with hiring the ‘right’ candidate within your business by providing you tips on how to truly conduct a successful interview.

According to Statistic Brain, $50 billion is stolen annually from U.S. Businesses by their employees. That is almost equivalent to $137 million a day that comes right off the bottom line from all companies combined throughout the nation. This is a staggering amount, which can be blamed on our economy, a company’s culture, their screening process and I personally know it can be seen & prevented during the hiring process. Mainly in the first INTERVIEW and I want to show you how.

There have been dishonest people throughout the world for thousands of years and obviously this will continue but the question is not one’s level of integrity but why are we hiring someone who is being dishonest during the interview?

Since, I am sure no one would knowingly hire someone who was being deceptive during an interview; I could only assume it is because the interviewer is not aware of the non-verbal modes of communication that occur during EVERY conversation.

I am going to cover eight (8) CREDIBLE steps that will assist you within the hiring process, making your interviews more effective, which in turn will help you make a better decision when attempting to hire the ‘right’ person for the job.

1.    CONDUCT A THOROUGH REVIEW OF THE RESUME:

According to the Society of Human Resource managers, 53% of people lie on their resume. So, that means more than half of the people you interview will have inaccurate information on their resume/application.

When reviewing a resume, you should be aware of time gaps, numerous employers, education level and experience in the position they are applying for.

If you are reviewing an application, you should pay close attention to the reasons they left their previous employer/s, criminal convictions and missing names/numbers of previous employers. This is the information you will use to base some of your questioning during an actual interview.


2.   REVIEW THE REFERENCES:

Now, some businesses will not give you any information regarding an applicant and may have you contact their corporate office.

However, it doesn’t hurt to try and who knows, you may get some very insightful information that you could use in your interview.

So, please ensure you are taking notes while conducting your reference checks and use these notes as a guide with regards to their previous employers, education and additional skills they CLAIM to have on their resume or application.


3.    ELIMINATE INTERRUPTIONS:

You can do this by placing a ‘DO NOT DISTURB’ sign on the door, turning off your mobile phone, asking them to turn their phone off and/or unplugging any landline phones in the interviewing area.

Then remove the barrier that most interviewers have when conducting an interview. You know the barrier I’m referring to.

Come out from behind your desk and place two chairs facing one another in the middle of the room with nothing in between them. Now, you the interviewer should be sitting in a rolling chair, preferably one with a backrest and armrests. The interviewee should be sitting in a stationary chair with a backrest but without wheels and preferably without armrests.

This will help you read their body language during the interview and since their chair will not have wheels, they will not be able to roll their chair & release nervous energy.


4.    DON’T ASK CLOSED ENDED QUESTIONS:

You should be doing 20% of the talking as they should be doing 80% of the talking, which can be accomplished by asking open ended questions.

For instance, “Tell me about a time you were terminated by one of your previous employers.” as opposed to “Have you ever been terminated by one of your previous employers?” The first question is open and will cause the guilty party to think more about the answer, which in turn may cause non-verbal modes of communication or body language markers of discomfort.

This can help you identify the dishonest candidate and actually motivate them to be honest about their previous performance issues as well as why they were terminated. We will talk more about that in step # 5.

The latter of the two questions is closed and could be easily answered with a simple ‘no’, whether they were or were not terminated in the past.


5.    INTENSIVE LISTENING:

An honest person will usually speak with confidence and in a timely manner to the question being asked. Using the example above, an honest person after hearing the question “Tell me about a time you were terminated by one of your previous employers.” will quickly reply; “I’ve never been terminated!” if they in fact have not been.

However, the dishonest candidate may pause and take a moment to think before answering that question because of how it was asked. Since a simple yes or no doesn’t suffice, they will need to think more about the actual time they WERE terminated! That pause in answering can mean a few things such as them thinking about, which job of the many they may have been terminated from or they may be deciding whether or not to be honest with you (Internal Dialogue).

That is when your rolling chair comes into play and is used to move in just a bit closer and with a soft spoken tone of voice say something like: “Hey, we’re both human and we all make mistakes and bad decisions sometimes. What happened?, Why were you terminated?” This rationalization is how you can motivate them to be more honest with regards to answering that question. This technique can be used with other open ended questions as well.


6.   BE AWARE OF THE NON-VERBAL CLUES:

Please keep in mind when reading body language, the markers or ‘tells’ mentioned below must come in clusters and be timely with the questions asked.

Just observing one or two of the body language markers mentioned below does NOT mean the candidate is being deceptive. These behaviors are usually associated with individuals who are nervous in general and that would be a normal reaction during an interview. However, we all know that a person being deceptive will most likely be nervous as well.

So, be mindful of the following body language markers or ‘tells’:

  • Tone of voice
  • Eye contact/movement
  • Red/flush/blotchy skin
  • Body alignment
  • Hesitation with answers
  • Breathing pace
  • Open or closed body language
  • Avoiding questions
  • Position of legs/feet
  • Look for unusual reactions
  • Dramatic changes in body position
  • Negative tone on specific questions
  • Wringing of hands/repeated rubbing or scratching

Once again, please keep in mind when reading body language, the aforementioned markers or ‘tells’ must come in clusters and be timely with the questions asked.

Just observing one or two of the body language markers above does NOT mean the candidate in being deceptive. You are merely evaluating comfort levels to the questions being asked.

To learn more about body language markers, feel free to click on or search #ClipWithATip now.


7.    LOOK FOR FACIAL MICRO-EXPRESSIONS:

Seven Universal Facial Expressions of Emotion (Humintell)Another body language marker to pay close attention to are the facial micro-expressions that happen sometimes in a fifth of a second, which can help you determine what emotion they are truly feeling at the very moment the question was asked.

The Seven Basic Emotions are 1. Anger, 2. Contempt, 3. Disgust, 4. Fear, 5. Happiness, 6. Sadness 7. Surprise.

These emotions have been scientifically proven to have a certain facial expression associated with them, which you can see below in the photos


8.    ENSURE THAT THREE FORMS ARE PROVIDED:

So, you feel this is the person you would like to hire? I would strongly suggest having EVERY potential employee read and sign a background check consent form, credit check consent form as well as a drug test consent form.

Once they are provided with these documents, they have been informed that these extra preventive measures are in place, which may in turn make them reconsider employment if they KNOW you are checking all three areas. If they sign the forms, ensure all three checks are actually completed.


In conclusion, there are numerous tools you can use to ensure you are conducting a successful interview. The eight steps mentioned above are a few of the basics needed in order to become a successful interviewer and assist you within the hiring process.

If you truly want to master the art of interviewing, then you should NOT miss my presentation entitled “Interviews For Success: An insiders approach to reading body language.”, where I discuss open ended questions, facial micro-expressions and how to read body language effectively.

The post 8 CREDIBLE Steps To Become A Successful Interviewer first appeared on Humintell.

Filed Under: Deception, Emotion, Nonverbal Behavior

The Humintell Blog August 21, 2021

The Role of Nonverbal Communication in the Classroom

What role does nonverbal communication play in the classroom? As many children around the country head back to school, it’s important for parents and teachers to think about nonverbal communication and how it influences behavior and learning.

In the video below, Dr. Matsumoto discusses the role of nonverbal communication between teachers and students in order to create better engagement between them. For the complete interview, visit this past blog post.

Dr. Matsumoto believes teachers can think about how to structure an environment to foster a certain type of engagement. He emphasizes different types of environments give implicit messages. 

The Latest Research

Research backs up what Dr. Matsumoto suggests. A 2018 study published in the Journal of Experimental Child Psychology found that heavily decorated classrooms can bombard students with too much visual information, interfering with their memory and ability to focus.

While teachers have good intentions when decorating, many classrooms end up being “sensory-rich” in a way that “could hamper children’s learning gains rather than help,” according to psychologists Pedro Rodrigues and Josefa Pandeirada, who co-authored the study.

7 Tips to Foster a Better Learning Environment

What are some helpful tips to improve students’ executive functions, which include skills like memory, attention, and self-regulation? Read our handy infographic below created with info from Edutopia.

The post The Role of Nonverbal Communication in the Classroom first appeared on Humintell.

Filed Under: Nonverbal Behavior, Science

The Humintell Blog June 21, 2021

4 Body Language Displays You’ll See at the Tokyo Olympics

Tokyo 2020: Olympics boss reluctant to hold Games behind closed doors

The Tokyo Olympics are a month away! The Olympic Games are set to begin Friday July 23rd and are an excellent place to observe body language and nonverbal behavior; tensions are high and emotions are always on full display.

Keep in mind no matter how many times the Olympic venues and locations change, the facial expressions on an athlete’s face do not. The thrill of victory and the agony of defeat will always be signaled on the face in the same way.

What nonverbal displays can you observe at the Olympic Games? Read on to learn more…


1) Universal Facial Expressions of Emotion

The Olympics give us an opportunity to read people exhibiting unfiltered, raw emotions. With emotions as high as they are during the Games, few people would attempt to conceal their emotions, even if they weren’t so physically exhausted!

Humintell Director Dr. David Matsumoto’s experience as an Olympic Judo coach and International Judo Federation (IJF) Researcher has given him unique insight into the way Olympians express emotions.

His study entitled “Spontaneous facial expressions of emotion of congenitally and non-congenitally blind individuals” was published in the Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. The first of its kind, he studied congenitally blind (blind from birth) and sighted judo athletes at the 2004 Paralympic Games and the 2004 Summer Olympic Games in Athens, Greece.

During the course of the study, more than 4,800 photographs were captured and analyzed, including images of athletes from 23 countries. According to the findings, there were “no differences between congenitally blind, non-congenitally blind, and sighted athletes, either on the level of individual facial actions or in facial emotion configurations”.

This meant that the blind and sighted athletes produced the exact same facial expression, firing the exact same muscles at exactly the same time in similar situations.

These findings provide compelling evidence that facial expressions of emotion are hardwired into our genes and are not learned culturally.


2) Duchenne Smiles

Podium Mens Judo Competition 60 Kg Men Editorial Stock Photo - Stock Image | Shutterstock

After examining photos from top competitors in the 2004 Olympic Games, Dr. Matsumoto observed that the winners almost all sported pronounced, genuine smiles.

He referred to these as the Duchenne smile, and the genuine nature of the setting showcases these as truly prototypical expressions of happiness.

These involved: “smiles that involve not only the smiling muscle that pulls the lip corners up but also the muscle around the eyes, which lifts the cheeks, narrow the eyelids and produces crow’s feet wrinkles.”


3) Displays of Triumph

Judoka Travis Stevens Wins Team USA's First-Ever Olympic Medal In His Weight Class

In addition to being an amazing showcase of emotions, the Olympics also demonstrate the unity of human emotions across cultures. Given that the Games bring athletes together from all over the world, they present a prime study in the differences and similarities between different expressions of emotions.

Dr. Matsumoto’s research has also found that, upon winning the gold, Olympic athletes almost invariably showcase the same emotion: triumph.

Interestingly, this is not traditionally included as a universal basic emotion, but all the same, Dr. Matsumoto found it again and again in pictures and videos of triumphant competitors. He noted: “When we studied pride, there was always something gnawing at me because some of the expressions that were previously labeled pride just didn’t make that much sense to me.”

Eventually, he and fellow Humintell researcher Dr. Hyi Sung Hwang labeled this emotion triumph, contending that “Triumph has its own signature expression that is immediate, automatic and universal across cultures.” Instead of the subtle, self-satisfied smile that marks pride, triumph is displayed in a jubilant, almost aggressive fashion.

Interestingly, this emotion holds even in cultures where dominance and triumph are generally deemphasized in favor of humility, and it can be seen amongst non-human primates and even other animals as well. This all suggests a deep evolutionary and biological root behind the emotion of triumph, which we have also noted with other emotions.

Moreover, its manifestation is not just limited to a facial expression. Triumph is often accompanied by a sort of “victory stance,” with arms raised and head held up high. This holds for victors from all over the world, emphasizing past research that found similarities in gestures universally across cultures.


4) The Face Cover

We often see athletes and individuals in high stress, emotional situations do what Dr. Matsumoto calls a “face cover”.

But why exactly do people cover their face in emotional and stressful times?

Some individuals believe that the face cover is only a part of social communication, but Dr. Matsumoto believes that it is not. He believes that individuals often cover their face to conceal their emotions and that it is an immediate reaction that most people cannot control.

Dr. Matsumoto also suggests that covering one’s face could also have some evolutionary basis, rooted in not letting enemies see your emotions because it could potentially be a danger to your well-being. Nonetheless, this gesture is immediate and unconscious.

Keep your eye out for this behavior and you’ll surprisingly see it fairly frequently (you may even catch yourself doing it!)

The post 4 Body Language Displays You’ll See at the Tokyo Olympics first appeared on Humintell.

Filed Under: Emotion, Nonverbal Behavior

  • « Previous Page
  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • …
  • 198
  • Next Page »

About

Welcome to an aggregator for blogs about social engineering and related fields. Feel free to take a look around, and make sure to visit the original sites.

If you would like to suggest a site or contact us, use the links below.

Contact

  • Contact
  • Suggest a Site
  • Remove a Site

© Copyright 2022 Social Engineering Blogs · All Rights Reserved ·