Don't Shake Off the Handshake: Research Confirms a Firm Grip Is Key to Successful Job Interview

New research by University of Iowa business professor Greg Stewart confirms that a firm, solid handshake is an important part of a successful job interview, while a dead fish can end the interview before it even begins.

More important, in fact, than dress or physical appearance, the handshake seems to be a trigger that sets off an interviewer's overall impression of a person.

"We've always heard that interviewers make up their mind about a person in the first two or three minutes of an interview, no matter how long the interview lasts," said Stewart, associate professor of management and organizations in the Tippie College of Business. "We found that the first impression begins with a handshake that sets the tone for the rest of the interview."

The study, to be published later this year, marks the first time researchers have quantified the importance of a good handshake in the job interview process. The research was conducted with 98 students in the Tippie College of Business who were participating in mock job interviews with representatives from Iowa City-area businesses. The students also met at various times during their interviews with five trained handshake raters who subtly introduced themselves and shook hands, but otherwise did not participate in the interviews.

The handshake raters scored each student on his or her handshake, while the interviewers graded each student's overall performance and hireability. The two group's scores were then compared.

Stewart said the researchers found that those students who scored high with the handshake raters were also considered to be the most hireable by the interviewers.

Why is the handshake important? Stewart suspects it's because a handshake is one of the few things that provides a glimpse into the person's individuality during the first few minutes of an interview.

"Job seekers are trained how to act in a job interview, how to talk, how to dress, how to answer questions, so we all look and act alike to varying degrees because we've all been told the same things," he said. "But the handshake is something that's perhaps more individual and subtle, so it may communicate something that dress or physical appearance doesn't."

Generally, he said students who scored high on the handshake were seen as having more extroverted personalities, so they scored better with the interviewers because of greater ease with small talk, eye contact and other social skills.

But those whose handshakes were weak and wimpy generally seemed to have less gregarious personalities and were less impressive to the interviewers.

"We probably don't consciously remember a person's handshake or whether it was good or bad," Stewart said. "But the handshake is one of the first nonverbal clues we get about the person's overall personality, and that impression is what we remember."

Stewart said the elements of a good handshake were a firm, complete grip, eye contact and vigorous up-and-down movement. "A lot of what they teach in books about how to get a job," he said.

This may work against women, however, because their grips tend to be not as strong. Nevertheless, Stewart said that other research has shown that women are frequently stronger in other nonverbal communication skills that seemed to offset their less brawny grips.

And women who did have a strong handshake seemed to have an advantage over men.

"Those women seemed to be more memorable than men who had an equally strong handshake," he said. "A really good handshake made a bigger impact on the outcome of the interview for the women than it did for the men."

Stewart's paper, co-authored with UI Ph.D. students Susan Dustin and Todd Darnold, as well as former UI professor Murray Barrick who is now at Texas A&M University, will appear in September in the Journal of Applied Psychology.