With more of us working from home and participating in virtual conferences, here are five tips you can use to make yourself look more professional when meeting your colleagues online.
First, stay on mute when you are not speaking. And, this is critical, go on mute if you step away to take another call or talk to someone not on the call. Remember, everyone on the call can hear your side conversation. Not muting yourself is easily the number one way to hi-jack group conferences. Even shuffling papers on the desk or setting down your coffee cup will get picked up and magnified by some microphones. Side conversations and background noises can’t be eliminated entirely, but keeping yourself on mute when you are not speaking goes a long way to creating an effective online space to have a productive conversation.
Second, good lighting is essential to making yourself look professional. Face a window or place a lamp behind your computer screen to illuminate your face when you’re on video. Turn off light sources behind you that will cast your face in shadow. Let us see that smile!
Third, position your camera so that what we see behind you is not distracting (kids playing, pets etc.) and is something you don’t mind showing on camera. Creative use of privacy screens and corners of rooms go a long way in this regard. You can also create a privacy screen by using large pieces of furniture, such a book shelf, to help hide your surroundings.
Zoom has a built in virtual background feature. Simply click the little up-arrow icon next to the video camera in the lower left hand corner of the screen and select virtual backgrounds. Using this you can choose from a variety of backgrounds and even upload your own background image to hide your surroundings. Microsoft Teams has a feature that allows you to blur your background.
Fourth, don’t feel like you have to turn on your video if you don’t want to. Before this week, I would have thought that it went without saying that we don’t need to see you in your bathroom, but I did a group conference with someone sitting in their bathroom two days ago. I don’t remember anything this person said because while they were talking, I was trying to figure out where they were sitting and what they were doing. Most conferencing systems give you the option of dialing into an audio only call and you can always opt to turn off your camera if you are not comfortable in your surroundings or feel you are not “presentable”. There are a few people who leave their video off in most of the meetings I join. There’s nothing wrong with that. You should certainly leave your video off if you are driving so you are not tempted to keep looking at the camera. Keep your eyes on the road and stay safe.
Finally, if you are joining the conference from a mobile device and you are driving or walking around, take yourself off video when you are not speaking or trying to show the audience something. As humans, we can’t resist a moving screen. Nothing is more distracting than watching someone swing their phone around. People on the call will be watching your moving video and not paying attention to the speaker. It sounds silly, but this is a like doing jumping jacks in the middle of someone’s presentation. You would never do that in a “live” setting so have the same respect for the speaker in a virtual setting.
Hope this helps. Happy conferencing!