If interacting with people, especially large groups, is draining for you instead of energizing, you are likely an introvert.

We live in a society that often values the “extrovert ideal” but the skills common to introverts can be extremely valuable in the workplace, and many employers are seeing the value in having diverse teams and skillsets. In fact, people who can learn to master skills associated with both introversion and extroversion (called “ambiverts”) are proven to be the most successful in their career performance.

A job interview is like a staff meeting crossed with a first date.

It not only represents a stressful workplace experience, it's also a stressful social experience. As if meeting a bunch of strangers and answering pointed questions about your past achievements wasn't nerve-wracking enough, you also have to try to get those strangers to like you. And you only have a few minutes to make that connection.

Here are a few basic strategies to connect with your interviewers:

Be Friendly

In a tight labor market, characterized by both low unemployment and increased mobility for workers, retention becomes the main method of building and maintaining a highly productive staff. If you can't keep your best employees, HR becomes little more than a treadmill engine.

And that's the best-case scenario. The worst-case scenario includes a steady decline in your team’s overall talent level, marked by near continuous recruitment, complete with all the annoyance and distraction that entails.

In short: You enter complete business purgatory.

Social media has become imperative to attracting the best job candidates. Young, tech-savvy prospects spend most of their lives online. If you're not plugged into their world, you're likely going to miss out on some interesting talent.

Beyond its growing influence, social media provides unique recruiting opportunities compared to more traditional methods. The underlying concept of the sector - connectivity - allows an interaction with potential hires that normally doesn't come until late in the recruitment process.

You can become one of the best employees in your office, but it won't do your career any good if no one knows about your contribution.

Without wider recognition, you’re like one of those hip garage bands that's every critic's favorite, but no one else has ever heard of. Or the black-and-white, foreign-language indie movie that moves everyone who sees it to tears, but plays mostly to empty theaters for several weeks before becoming unwatched filler on a streaming service.