You destroyed the application, nailed the interview, and got the job, but you’re still awaiting your first real test: proving to everyone at the big company meeting that you are ready to lean in and dominate the conference room with your intimidating smarts.
Sound impossible? Not with our guide, it’s not!
Here are four ways to seem like the smartest person in the conference room!
DRESS TO IMPRESS
The first step to being the smartest person in the meeting is looking like the smartest person in the meeting.
Nothing screams “irreplaceable genius, savior of our company, Shonda Rhimes incarnate” quite like glasses. The thicker and blacker the frames, the better. In fact, prove that you’re so smart money means nothing to you and pop out the lenses of your Ray Bans. Look fly and look all-knowing, vina!
USE BIG WORDS
Time to break open the dictionary and augment new linguistic units to your repertoire of lexicon (see what we did there?). Try incorporating SAT vocab words like “defenestration”, “aberration”, or “abrogate” into your next meeting. Nobody else knows what they mean either, so no one will call you on it!
BE LIKE “THAT PERSON”
The real secret to sounding smart? Take a cue from that one student you’ve sat next to in every English class and just repeat what the last person said, but make it less insightful and more confusing! Adopt some key phrases like “Jumping off of that…” or “To add to what you just said…” The more you ramble and the less you add to the conversation, the more ingenious you sound.
THROW OUT SOME NUMBERS
It’s okay if you don’t actually know what this meeting’s about. The easiest way to disguise your confusion and impress your boss is to throw out some numbers! For example, the Grand Canyon can hold 900 trillion footballs. If you add up all integers from 1 to 100 consecutively, the total is 5050. Don’t know any figures off the top of your head? Say a really high number, and when your boss asks what you mean, say a business buzzword like “stocks” or “corporate synergy.” Everyone in the room will nod knowingly and applaud your insight. Fake it ’til you make it!
One last word of advice, vinas — #realtalk: you know how smart you are already! Just remember that you’re at that meeting for a reason. What you have to say is valuable, no matter how smart you sound saying it. So do you, and someone’s going to notice.
Results not guaranteed. Like, really, really not.
Which one of these tactics have you actually tried and gotten away with? Tell us about it in the comments!
Featured image via Business Insider
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