I love this story I read the other day.
A young man, gazing out a train window, exclaims at every new sight with glee:
“The sky is blue!”
“The trees are whizzing by!”
“I see a bird!”
The man’s father looks on proudly. Meanwhile, a couple sitting nearby cannot help express confusion tinged with pity. “Have you taken him to the doctor?” they ask the old man.
“Why yes,” he explains. “We are just coming from the hospital, where they cured my son’s blindness. He is seeing for the first time.”
Moral is, you just never know what someone’s story is. First impressions can be quite wrong.
On the other hand, as an Executive Recruiter in the business of connecting employers to candidates, I know how very important first impressions often are. So while I urge interviewers to look beyond first impressions, I also coax my candidates into making the best first impressions possible.