Unless you're dealing with an exceptional interviewer, which you can usually determine rather quickly, you should take it upon yourself to insure you find out what employer is looking for and convey how you can do job. There are two important things you need to accomplish in interviews: one is providing interviewer with factual information supporting idea that you are a good fit for job; other is for interviewer to connect with that logic on an emotional level. Trial attorneys face a similar challenge when presenting their case to a jury. They need to provide them with both factual information and with an emotional connection to their version of story.

The most powerful way of creating an emotional connection is through visualization. Just as a jury needs to visualize an attorney's version of a story for them to have an emotional connection with it, an interviewer needs to be able to visualize you in role they're hiring for, doing tasks of job. The interviewer needs to see you doing those things and needs to be able to visualize outcomes. Helping someone visualize your story can be done by using detailed descriptions of actions and through appropriate use of hand gestures and body language.

To illustrate, instead of saying person burglarized house, which is an abstract idea, a trial attorney would describe actions: John walked up brick walkway at 8:00 pm on a moonlit evening, shattered side window and climbed into house. The first way of explaining what happened just gives an abstract idea which creates either no image in listener's mind, or just a vague image that they won't remember. The second way provides a vivid image they can easily recall and connect to. The attorney might even use some gestures and body language when talking about walking up steps or shattering window, which further reinforces visual imagery.

With busy schedules, effectively staying in touch with people and using connections to get doors opened is difficult. Just within past few months, technology has been developed to meet these challenges and help people make most of their social networks. This technology is appropriately called "social networking software."

Of course most basic technology in this area is having an electronic address book. Microsoft Outlook is basically industry standard program to use. After inputting your contacts in Outlook, you can synchronize with a personal digital assistant (like Palm pilot). You can also use Outlook to interface with any of major social networking applications out there, including all of ones mentioned in this article.

Keeping in Touch

If you have 300 contacts in your address book but you only keep in touch with 40 of them on a regular basis, remaining 260 contacts are in danger of going "stale." Think of what happens when you flip through your card file or rolodex and come across a contact you haven't heard from for a couple years. Unless you knew person well, chances are you'll just throw out card. You may not ever remember how you met them!