What Pam from 'The Office' Said You Should Do As a Coach to Be Memorable to Your Recruits

What's this actor's secret to delivering a memorable scene? Read this, because it just may help you the next time you're talking to a prospect you really want...

Here’s the acting advice that actress Jenna Fischer, who played Pam in the wildly popular series The Office, says got her noticed time and time again in auditions:

“So in any project, if it's a TV show or a movie, that my acting coach said, you pick one moment for your character that you decide in this project is your big moment of realization - a confession, something, you pick one. And before you say that line... you pause, move forward and then say it. 

And my acting coach said even in auditioning, if you have just an audition scene, you pick one line in that audition scene where you pause and then you lean in before you say that line and you'll get the part every time. I swear to God, after I got that piece of acting advice, I went on a bunch of auditions. I got callbacks for like 12 auditions in a row when I did that little move-in thing. And I still use it, I still use that.”

Her fellow cast-mate Angela Kinsey, who played Angela in The Office alongside Fischer, also told a similar story about the power of a pause:

My acting coach did something similar. She was this very amazing old, older woman, and she said that she was auditioning for a movie and she was from France, and she had an old crown - like some dental work - that as she was giving her big speech she felt pop off in her mouth. And so she paused with her tongue to put it back in to cover her tooth back. And the pause was so long the room became quiet. And then once she got her crown back over her tooth, she finished her line and the casting doctor said, ‘That was the most powerful audition we have ever seen’.

She got the part. And so she was like, ‘So sometimes, you know, pause’. It's the one moment that doesn't make sense. And people are like, ‘Why doesn't that make sense? What is happening?’

What’s happening is a powerful communication technique that can cause your recruit to focus in on you, and remember you over all of the other coaches who are contacting them week after week after week…