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Um...Is this appropriate for interviews?

In chapter 4 of Um...I found the last paragraph on page 100 to be very interesting. It states that "In the United States, we often admire people for their brilliance when they're merely glib and smooth. Yet if we're interested in other qualities, such as honesty, authenticity, and charisma, then glib, uninterrupted speaking may not be what we want to hear. In fact, we might want to begin to mistrust perfect fluency." This paragraph made sense to me as there have been times when I've thought to myself 'this person is a smooth talker, are they telling me the truth?' If this is the case and perfect speech may be mistrusted why is it so strongly stressed in areas such as interviews? In this type of situation using words such as "um" and "uh" may be seen by the interviewer as one being ill-prepared and unable to think on their feet as opposed to someone who can quickly rattle off answers. However, with the paragraph on page 100 I am left to wonder if it is more important to allow yourself to say "um" and "uh" whenever you need to as opposed to having all of your answers come off too smooth and thus risk the chance of being mistrusted for what you are saying.

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This page contains a single entry from the blog posted on February 6, 2008 11:08 AM.

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