Have a Job Interview in Second Life? Choose Your Avatar Carefully

If you have a job interview in Second Life, you need to choose your avatar carefully! Your avatar can impact whether or not you get that job. In a recent press release, professor Dr. Darren Nicholson says that avatars can give potential employers clues about job candidates. Potential employers should use these clues when screening job candidates.

Chances are, if you had an interview live, and in person, you'd never wear pajamas, t-shirts, or jeans to that job interview. Not if you wanted to land that job. But a job interview in Second Life? Heck, no one knows what you're wearing anyway, right? Just pick an avatar and go for it.

Wrong, according to Dr. Darren Nicholson of Rowan University in Glassboro, N.J. You should select your avatar just as carefully as you would choose your clothes if you were interviewing face-to-face. Maybe you should choose the avatar that will represent you for that job interview even more carefully.

The choice of avatars for Second Life is limitless. You can be half-human, half-animal. You can choose an avatar that is scantily clad, or is wearing preppy clothes. Ask yourself, "If I had a job opening, would I hire that avatar?"

"You can have expressional relationships in Second Life that can say a lot about you. Are you wearing power red? Are you rearing dark blue? There are so many social indicators that we use in real life that are being transported into virtual universes. As such, you can tell a lot about people by their avatars' physical attributes because what they're doing - maybe unbeknownst to themselves - is creating characters with a lot of social cues and signals," said Dr. Nicholson.

It's important to remember that your avatar represents YOU. Right or wrong, your choice of avatars and its mannerisms represent you. You might want to keep your half-person, half-animal avatar for playing with friends, and not use it for job interviews.

"People may be more prone to let down their guard in a virtual environment than in real life. I think you can learn a lot about people by the avatar they create and the way it acts," said Nicholson.