Professor Elam

Malcolm Gladwell has become one of our best selling authors. I have read Outliers and just finished Blink.  This book is all about first impressions, and that means really fast first impressions. The TSA harasses people at airports. The Israelis are trained to look at people's eyes and determine who is the most likely person to be attempting some covert act. The book traces Ted Williams, a psychologist that could even analyze horses at the track, food tasters, you name it. Somehow Gladwell has the ability to link an idea for a book with a wide net of success examples  that reflects his ideas. And as always he is a master of expressing technical in easily understood jargon, his description of seven years of research on facial muscles to reflect intent is a good example.  

A couple of years back on this blog I suggested that prior to a job interview, students would do well to read some Sherlock Holmes. Holmes used deductive reasoning, then a popular crime solving technique popularized by Scotland Yard. My point was that in an interview, the interviewer will make a thin sliced decision (Gladwell's term) in five minutes about whether to pursue the interviewee further. So the person being interviewed probably has no more than two or three minutes to

size up the interviewer

make note of what details about the person are available, observe their office, what photos are on the desk, how are they dressed, is there is diploma on the wall, from what school, etc

and then make a decision on what approach will work best, what will interest the interviewer in you?

Hmm, along the way be sure to read Carnegie's How to Win Friends and Influence People. 

Gladwell uses baseball player Ted Williams to illustrate the impossible, Williams says he see the ball hit the bat but time still photos show this is simply impossible, yet Wiliams clearly had an ability to sense that intersection of ball and bat that eluded other players. 

Good reading to further your education I would say…