How to Get a Job?

An article in The Metro caught my eye this week. Under the headline ‘This Zoom trick could help you nail a job interview,’ the writer recommends looking at the webcam during an online interview. When an interviewee looked down (at the interviewer’s face on their screen), they were ‘more negatively evaluated than having a voice-only interview.’

Old news! We were giving this guidance way back in Spring 2020, during the early weeks of the Covid lockdown. Working from home but doing the same pressured jobs with the same high-stakes interactions, our clients turned to us for any advice we had on strong communication online. ‘Look at the camera’ was close to the top of our list.

Zoom Theatre

At the time, I was making my own discoveries about online eye contact. In my other life, producing Zoom theatre, I experimented with having the actors pretend to look at each other during the scenes. But it just didn’t work. Only when then the actors looked directly into the camera could the audience fully engage with their words and actions.

Induction Videos

These early-lockdown discoveries remain central to MSB Executive’s online communications work. Just last week we were helping one client to create a series of welcome videos for new joiners. We did the recordings remotely, via Teams. The tone and style of the videos needed to be professional but friendly and engaging, so we reminded our clients to look at the camera when speaking.

‘Look into the camera.’ This advice – as dished out in the Metro article – is all well and good, but at MSB Executive, we recognise that it’s much easier said than done. Here are the main challenges our clients were facing:

1. The webcam was not always easy to see. In the conference room some were recording from, it was over on the far side of the room. On the iPad one team member was using, the webcam is a near-invisible little circle behind the glass.
2. Like all of us, the client team were naturally drawn to the faces on their screen (us!). Unfortunately, when we look at our screen, to our audience we appear to be looking down. The connection is broken.

So how could we give our clients the support they needed? By resorting to one of my favourite tricks. It’s very simple and very effective. Over the last few years I’ve shared it with thousands of people, and I still use it myself. I came up with it during lockdown, when my Zoom actors were also struggling to remember to look into the camera. (It’s something you almost never do on film or TV, so it went against their training and instincts.)

Equipment

1 Post-it Note
1 marker pen
Scissors

Time

1 minute

Instructions

1. Rotate the Post-It pad so that the sticky side is at the bottom.
2. Draw two large eyes at the bottom of the Post-it Note, with a gap in between them.
3. Peel off the Post-it and cut out a hole between the eyes.
4. Stick the Post-it to the top of your laptop screen so that the camera is between the eyes.

Now, whenever it’s your turn to speak, look at the eyes!

A brightly coloured Post-it also comes in very useful when speaking to an online audience from a conference room. Before the meeting, figure out which camera gives your audience their POV (point of view), and stick the Post-it note to the camera. You could also draw on some eyes for good measure!

Simultaneous eye contact online – two people looking at each other – is impossible. We look into the webcam for our audience’s benefit. We create the illusion that we are looking at them. We are prioritising the audience’s experience over ours. This is a hallmark of the excellent communicator.

Will others do the same for us when it’s their turn to talk? Maybe. And if they don’t, send them to MSB Executive for some brilliant coaching, with plenty more tips, tricks and techniques for great communication.