So I just finished listening to Malcolm Gladwell's audiobook "What The Dog Saw" on my way back from a road trip, and one story close to the end stuck out quite a bit.

Malcolm begins his story describing a young college senior who he wants to interview regarding the modern day hiring practices of Silicon Vally companies. He tells us that in just the time it takes to set up his interview with the kid, a three minute phone chat, he suddenly feels like he really likes and trusts this young man, but can't quite figure out why. In fact, most everyone who meets this kid likes him right away, and wants to hire him based on almost no other qualifications. This includes the CEO of Microsoft in which after a two minute encounter, the kid enamored the CEO so much, he began calling and emailing like a desperate school girl, trying to court him to the billion dollar company.

He likens the modern day job interview to a date. In the 60s, the candidate knew what a certain company wanted, and tailored their persona to that corporation. But today, especially in silicon valley, more companies are looking for someone who feels right, who is going to be well liked and a friend, because long hours in group work settings demand that whoever you're spending all that time with not be a douche (my words, haha).

But where it gets really interesting (and important for us) is when he describes a study. A psychologist asks students to evaluate different teachers based on an 8 second video clip. Seems too short, right? They record their answers, then he reduces the clip to 2 seconds, and asks them to evaluate, and guess what? The two evaluations correlate almost perfectly, as do they with even more in depth evaluations of teachers after a full classroom lecture.

So what does this tell us? What we deduce about another person over the course of an hour, half an hour, or just a few minutes, in fact, aligns almost perfectly about what we deduce just moments after meeting them. That's due to a few things: First, we immediately and innately evaluate and judge someone as soon as we meet them. Second, once we've made our snap decision about that person, everything they say - every answer, every statement, every joke - becomes a self fulfilling prophecy from the first moment on. Your judgement is clouded, and no matter what the person says, it will automatically be spun either positively or negatively in your mind based on the initial assessment.

So what this tells me, is that when meeting people for the first time, almost nothing else matters but confidence. If from the second a girl meets you, you display nothing but a calm, happy, confident and outgoing exterior, she will like you, and everything you say from there on out will be heard and received in a positive way. Meeting a girl is just like a job interview. Even if you don't have some of the qualifications she's looking for, with the right attitude, she'll hire you, because let's face it, she has no reason not to want to be with you, unless you prove her wrong.

A note - I've been reading seddit for a while now, and love it. I've really seen a change in my persona, and while many others have posted about confidence and how important it is, a little anecdote never hurts. Thanks for reading and I hope you enjoyed it.

TL;DR - First impressions are key, always start off with confidence and everything else will fall into place.