For those of you listening in the year 2240, we're all dead.

I'm Antela Duckworth.

I'm Stephen Dovner.

And you're listening to No Stupid Questions.

Today on the show, how important are first impressions?

God, I thought that guy was a real jerk.

Stephen, I know you've done a lot of interviews in your life.

I'm wondering how quickly do you come to a first impression of someone?

How quickly do you think they're coming to an impression of you?

I can answer the second question quickly.

I don't know.

I think that I, like most of us, have a pathetically small amount of feedback about how other

users perceive us upon a first meeting.

Someone I recently met said to me, and I really appreciated it, even though it was negative.

They said, wow, you ask a lot of questions.

It was not meant to be a compliment.

But it was useful feedback because I do ask a lot of questions, and it's not always

appropriate.

But I have to say, it's very rare, I think, that you actually get feedback about someone

else's first impression of you as for your first question about me interviewing people.

So in most cases where I interview someone, I and my crew, we've already tried to learn

quite a lot about that person.

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