Body Language Checklist

What interviewers actually notice

Most interviewers are not trained to read body language and do not consciously analyse yours. What they register is an overall impression: does this person seem engaged, at ease and interested in us? That impression is built from a small number of signals that are easy to see from across a table or through a screen. Whether you look at them while they speak. Whether you are sitting toward them or away from them. Whether your hands are still or restless. Whether your face responds to what they say.

Everything else, including the angle of your feet, the position of your thumbs and most of what you will read about micro-expressions, is noise. You will also see the claim that 55 percent of communication is nonverbal. That figure comes from a 1960s study of how people judged the feeling behind single words when tone and word disagreed, and it has nothing to say about interviews. The honest version is simpler: your words carry the content, and your body decides whether the interviewer believes you are comfortable saying them.

That is why body language is worth working on. It will not get you hired. It can stop a good answer from being heard, because an interviewer distracted by your pen-clicking or avoiding your stare is not listening to the story you prepared.

Eye contact, posture and hands

These three carry most of the impression. Get them to a point where they need no attention during the interview, so your attention can go to the questions.

Handling nerves so they do not show

Being nervous is not the problem. Visibly nervous is, and only a few things are visible: fast speech, a bouncing leg, hands that wring or click or touch the face, shallow breathing and a voice that fades at the end of sentences. Each has a fix that nobody across the table can see.

• Plant your feet flat on the floor. Leg bouncing starts with heels raised; flat feet make it physically harder.
• Give the energy somewhere invisible to go: press your feet into the floor, or press thumb and forefinger together under the table.
• Breathe out slowly before each answer. The exhale is what slows the heart; it also builds in the pause that stops you rushing.
• Say the first sentence of each answer deliberately slowly. The rest of the answer tends to follow the pace you set.
• Have water. A sip is a legitimate pause, a reset for a dry mouth, and something for your hands to do once.
• Accept a shaky start. Most interviewers discount the first two minutes, because everyone is nervous then.
• Ask for time out loud if you need it. "Let me think about that for a second" is a normal sentence, and the silence after it reads as considered, not lost.

Video interview specifics

On video the interviewer sees a rectangle of head and shoulders, so posture and face carry more weight and everything below the desk disappears. The setup takes five minutes and makes more difference than most of what you can do in the call itself.

Cultural notes

Body-language norms are not universal, and the gap is large enough to matter in an interview. What reads as confident in one country can read as aggressive or disrespectful in another.

Sustained direct eye contact is expected in the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, the Netherlands and most of Northern Europe. In Japan, Korea and parts of East Asia, and in some African and Middle Eastern cultures, long eye contact with a senior person can be read as challenging; softer, intermittent contact is the safer default. A firm handshake is standard in North America and Europe and lighter in much of East Asia; in some settings people may prefer not to shake hands across genders, so follow the interviewer's lead rather than extending yours first.

Expressive hand gestures are normal in Southern Europe and Latin America and can read as excitable in Scandinavia, Germany or Japan. Constant smiling reads as friendly in the United States and as unserious in parts of Central and Eastern Europe. Comfortable personal distance varies by a foot or more between cultures.

The practical rule is to mirror the interviewer in front of you: their level of formality, eye contact and expressiveness. When unsure, slightly more reserved is safer than slightly more expansive. And at international companies the interviewer may not be from the country the office is in, so read the person, not the postcode.

A pre-interview routine

Good body language in the room is mostly a product of what you did in the hour before it. This routine is designed so that by the time the interviewer walks in, your body is already settled.

• The night before: lay out clothes, test camera and audio if remote, confirm the route or the link. Sleep beats one more hour of revision.
• 60 minutes before: stop rehearsing content. Eat something light. Caffeine on an empty stomach makes hands shake.
• 30 minutes before: arrive in the area or open your video setup. In person, walk for ten minutes. On video, check framing and light, close every other app and silence notifications.
• 10 minutes before: stand up, roll your shoulders back and down, and breathe out slowly five times with the exhale longer than the inhale. Loosen your jaw; clenching it tightens the voice.
• 5 minutes before: warm up your voice by saying your first answer out loud once, at the volume you will use. A voice that has not spoken for an hour cracks.
• 2 minutes before: if your hands are cold, rub them together, then put them down. Sit back, feet flat, hands resting, one slow breath.
• The first 30 seconds: stand to greet, eye contact, a real smile, their name. The impression that forms here is the one you will spend the rest of the interview confirming or fighting.

Mistakes, and how to practise fixing them

• Overcorrecting into a performance. Scripted gestures and an unbroken smile look stranger than ordinary nerves.
• Looking at the screen instead of the camera for the entire video call, so you never once appear to look at them.
• A phone on the table. Even face down and silent, it says you have somewhere else to be.
• Crossing your arms and leaning back when a hard question comes. You may be thinking; it reads as defensive.
• Nodding constantly while they speak. It looks like agreement with everything, or impatience to talk.
• Holding a pen, mug or sheaf of notes throughout. Hands with props cannot gesture and will fidget.
• Trailing off, letting the volume drop at the end of sentences so that every answer sounds unsure of itself.
• Forgetting the exit. The walk out, the handshake and the last look are the final thing they see.