Week 7

In week 7 we talked about "Body Language and Interviewing Skills" and we had a test.

Knowledge: at the time that you will be able to understand better yourself, your weakness, your strength, then you can be able to influence the others

Body language: as the presentation shows, we are able to understand whether two and more people are fighting, arguing, or acting normal to each other and even if we haven't heard any word of what they were saying. This could happen simply because of body language.

Some statistics show that the higher percentage that can influence communication is the body language which is 55%, then comes the voice with a 38% in which you either speak loud, fast, you show that you argue with something etc, and the last one is the words with a 7%.

(London Metropolitan University)

The body language is divided in seven (7) elements which are the following ones:

• Facial expressions: show if someone is happy, sad, angry etc
• Gaze: eyes can show what someone feels or why s/he acts in that way. for example there are times that someone looks down when talking or looks up or looks up and at the left side or right side, all these can be perceived with a different meaning.
• Posture: how someone sits somewhere, if he feels very relaxed or not etc
• Gestures: it can convey a sense of information for example when you want to show to someone that you are here and you want to talk to them or when you want to wave goodbye, it can also show that you feel anxious about something and as a result you "play" with what you feel as familiar to you.
• Proximity: this refer to how near or far you stand from someone when talking or even and when sitting or standing somewhere. there are different situations that you are comfortable sitting near to someone (like a friend etc), and situations when you want your space from the others. In every country this can be conveyed differently (it can be positive to be close to someone else or negative)
• Touch: it can be a handshake with someone else when you first see them or you greet the m goodbye or it can be something more when it is related to more personal situations
• Appearance: this has to do with how you appear to others meaning how you dress up and what this may show to someone else.

(London Metropolitan University)

In this lecture we talked also about Interviewing skills and we were given some questions in relation to this topic as to what a prospect interviewer could ask a candidate about.

I have a knowledge of job interviews as I had been in many and different of them in the past few years. An interview that i remember as afterwards i came to do my internship was the one in a newspaper. I felt nervous and I didn't also believe that I would get accepted there. At the time of the interview I had to talk to three different persons including the director of that newspaper. The questions that they asked me at that time where in relation to whether i have worked before, my university lessons' schedule (at that time i was a student in another field of study).

I have been also and to other job interviews which the interviewers asked various questions, for example: why did i choose to go to this job interview, why am i thinking of doing in the near future, describe my academic qualifications and many other.

Every interview shows something different since there are different persons and different questions can be posed and I think that this helped me to learn more of what to expect and be better prepared.

I think that this lesson was an important one since it focused also on interviewing which everyone sooner or later will face in their lives when searching for a job.

In the same lesson we also had to write a test which covered lectures from weeks one to six. The test had 10 questions from which some needed elaboration and others were of bullet type ones.