Handwriting: The Service-Oriented Person

For those of you who are hiring staff and who would like more information about your candidate so that you can get to know them better, here’s a great general tip: Hand any candidate you interview from this time onward a few sheets of BLANK paper and ask them to write some of their long- and short-term goals, ask them to write what they understand the job responsibilities are, and ask them to write down why they are excited at the prospect of working with your company. In doing this, you will get a few pages from your candidate’s heart and thoughts rather than receiving a crafted resume. Doing this will also give you more information to target questions to both your candidate and to their references.

For those of you seeking service-oriented people, look at those few handwritten sheets from your candidate and see if any of these trait strokes are present:

Diplomacy: If the second portion of your candidate’s letter m’s are lower than the first portion, they are indicating they can be quite diplomatic with others, and are good at gaining the cooperation of others. Other people will do what your candidate asks, even if they’re not sure why.

Helping Others: Are the lead-in strokes to your candidate’s letter h’s suspended above the baseline? If the answer is yes, your candidate is someone who has a need to be needed, and likely loves to reach out to others.

Empathy: One area of empathy in handwriting is reflected by a gentle forward slant, indicating the person will not only reach out to others, but is someone who others can relate to easily.

Being of Service: Do some or most of your candidate’s letter s’s have soft tops? Do some of their letter r’s have a soft top as well? If you see many of these soft tops on these particular letters, it indicates ‘yieldingness’ in your candidate. That is, your candidate wishes to accommodate to the needs and wishes of others—it may be difficult for your candidate to say ‘no’, especially when ‘no’ is going to result in unpleasantness or confrontation. If the position you need to fill is sales related and you see a high number of these soft-topped s’s, it indicates your candidate will be a relationship-building type of sales person and not someone who is a hard-core crunch-the-numbers sales type of person.

Be sure to view my 5-minute “Power of the Pen” DVD on my Home Page at www.elainecharal.com!