Top Body Language Mistakes in Job Interviews
About 55 percent of communication is visual, a key part of which is body language. Does your body language say you are confident, smart and relaxed? Or the exact opposite? In the workplace, and especially during a job interview, body language can have a huge effect on how you are perceived.

In a recent CareerBuilder.com survey of more than 2,500 hiring managers, respondents revealed the top body-language mistakes that would make them less likely to hire a job candidate:

• Failure to make eye contact (67 percent);
• Lack of a smile (38 percent);
• Fidgeting too much (33 percent);
• Bad posture (33 percent);
• Weak handshake (26 percent);
• Arms crossed over chest (21 percent);
• Playing with hair or touching face (21 percent); and
• Using too many hand gestures (9 percent).

"In a highly competitive job market, job seekers need to set themselves apart in the interview stage," Rosemary Haefner, vice president of human resources for CareerBuilder, said in a statement. "All that pressure, though, may have some job seekers making body language mistakes that don't convey a confident message.

"To avoid these faux pas, and ensure you're remembered for the right reasons," Haefner continued, "try practicing ahead of time in front of a mirror or family and friends."

(For more on the significance of body language in the workplace, be sure to check out IMT's "Communication" issue next Tuesday.)

Equation for the Perfect Handshake
Speaking of strong handshakes, Chevrolet U.K. is looking to arm its sales force with the perfect variation of that deal-sealing gesture.

Using new research from Geoffrey Beattie, head of psychological sciences at the University of Manchester, the car company is relying on Beattie's mathematical formula for the perfect handshake (PH):

PH = √ (e^2 + ve^2)(d^2) + (cg + dr)^2 + π{(4<s>^2)(4<p>^2)}^2 + (vi + t + te)^2 + {(4<c>^2 )(4<du>^2)}^2

A press release from the automaker (via Discover's Discoblog) outlines the variables:

e) is eye contact (1=none; 5=direct) 5; (ve) is verbal greeting (1=totally inappropriate; 5=totally appropriate) 5; (d) is Duchenne smile - smiling in eyes and mouth, plus symmetry on both sides of face, and slower offset (1=totally non-Duchenne smile (false smile); 5=totally Duchenne) 5; (cg) completeness of grip (1=very incomplete; 5=full) 5; (dr) is dryness of hand (1=damp; 5=dry) 4; (s) is strength (1= weak; 5=strong) 3; (p) is position of hand (1=back towards own body; 5=other person's bodily zone) 3; (vi) is vigour (1=too low/too high; 5=mid) 3; (t) is temperature of hands (1=too cold/too hot; 5=mid) 3; (te) is texture of hands (5=mid; 1=too rough/too smooth) 3; (c) is control (1=low; 5=high) 3; (du) is duration (1= brief; 5=long) 3.

"The mathematical formula has been developed for car brand Chevrolet as part of a handshake training guide for its staff to prepare them ahead of the launch of the new 5 Year Promise offer, which aims to offer peace of mind and reassurance to its customers," the press release states.

According to Beattie's research, as many as two in three people (70 percent) have a crisis of confidence when it comes to performing a handshake. (Image credit: Stock.Xchng/mikecco)

The 7 Internet Keymasters
Seven people have been chosen to receive keys that, when used together from a secure location, can be used to "restart the world wide web" after a "catastrophic event," according to news reports this week.

A team of computer scientists has developed a security system called DNSSEC (domain name system security) that's intended to ensure websites are what they say they are. The selection of seven keyholders — the "keys" are actually smartcards, each of which is just one-fifth of a key — is to reassure consumers that online systems would continue to work even in the event of a major disaster. It would only affect the websites using DNSSEC.

"The seven members of this holy order of cyber security hail from around the world and recently received their keys while locked deep in a U.S. bunker," Popular Science reports this week. "A minimum of five of the seven keyholders — one each from the United States, Britain, Burkina Faso, Trinidad and Tobago, Canada, China and the Czech Republic — would have to converge at a U.S. base with their keys to restart the system and connect everything once again."

So, This Happened
Researchers from the Italian Institute of Technology taught a robot arm how to flip pancakes.

"The skill is first demonstrated through kinesthetic teaching, where the user grasps and moves the robot to provide an initial example of flipping the pancake. During demonstration, the robot is gravity-compensated to move it easily as if it had no weight," MAKE magazine's blog explains. "The pancake flipping skill is then refined by reinforcement learning, which allows the robot to reproduce the task in different configurations and positions by extracting automatically the important characteristics of the skill."

"After 50 trials, the robot learns that the first part of the task requires a stiff behavior to throw the pancake in the air, while the second part requires the hand to be compliant in order to catch the pancake without having it bounced off the pan," according to researchers Petar Kormushev and Sylvain Calinon's project page.

A robot learning to flip pancakes from Sylvain Calinon on Vimeo.