The Simple Truth About Being Likeable

I read a good number of books on how to succeed in your career, and after a particularly dull one last week, I checked out the book that, for better or worse, spawned the genre.

Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends and Influence People came out in 1937, in the midst of the Great Depression. It sold out multiple editions its first year and still sells pretty briskly. It is easy to see why. The book is quick reading, a mix of directness and wild hyperbole. One chapter is titled: “The Big Secret of Dealing with People.”

Carnegie’s advice boils down to “how to get what you want by giving people what they want.” Back then, many critics called it cynical, but in our age of self-promotion, its honesty seems oddly refreshing.

A quick review of Carnegie’s ideas is not a bad crib sheet for winning negotiations or sales, as well as making a good impression at a job interview.

The big secret, by the way, is to “give honest and sincere appreciation.”

The Paradox of Likeability

One of Carnegie’s major themes is that to succeed at influencing people, and, in turn, life itself, you need to see things from the other person’s point of view.

For a job seeker, that means means finding out as much as you can about a company, manager and team before your interview. Dig a little deeper than the company’s web site or the first page of Google results.

Your goal is to find out what the manager you will be speaking with really needs from an employer, and then to present yourself as that person. Today’s career coaches often call this defining pain points or identifying the labor gap.

Another key to getting hired is appearing likeable.

How much an interviewer likes you as a person and a potential co-worker is going to be a big factor in whether you get a job, regardless of how your skills and experience compare to that of other candidates.

How can you appear likeable? Get people to talk about themselves. You may want to think otherwise, but the truth about human nature is that we like people less because of who they are than how they let us express who we are.

Carnegie’s Six Ways to Make People Like You

• Become genuinely interested in other people.
• Smile.
• Remember that a person’s name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language.
• Be a good listener. Encourage others to talk about themselves.
• Talk in terms of the other person’s interests.
• Make the other person feel important—and do it sincerely.

During an interview or while networking, that all comes down to doing a lot more listening than talking.

You may think you are there to sell yourself, and you are. But the key to Carnegie’s genius is his unvarnished declaration that you are more likely to sell yourself or your product by encouraging other people to talk about themselves.

Be curious and try to determine the other person’s motivations, needs, and goals.

Listening carefully will give you clues about your next questions, and how you present your product or ideas. You want your interviewer to feel so comfortable and connected to you that they think of your ideas as their own and feel that they will enjoy working with you.

If this doesn’t sound particularly genuine, or seems downright manipulative, Carnegie suggests framing your conversation as an opportunity to learn.

Assume the other person is superior to you in some way (they will always assume they are), and view the conversation as time to develop yourself by finding out more about what they know.

Influencing your interviewer begins with smiling and using their name when greeting them. Use it again when thanking them for their time when it is over. And don’t forget to smile.