Disclaimer: in many contexts, social engineering is put in the context of trickery, lying, and deceit. From the pickup artist misrepresenting himself to women, to the hacker posing as an employee to gain access to company records, most people’s ideas of social engineering are built upon deception. While not irrelevant, this is not the goal of living like a Gentleman Spy. There is no need to have nefarious purposes or break the law in order to reap the fruits of mastering social engineering.

Social Engineering is the bread and butter of spies around the world, and what sets the wannabes apart from the pros. James Bond is first and foremost a spy. That means extracting information and getting others to do what you want them to do. While it’s unlikely that you will need to find and develop an asset or convince somebody to risk their life and betray their country, understanding social engineering will enhance your general social skills and positively impact your life in countless ways.

Social Engineering is often referred to in the context of information security, but for our purposes, we are referring to the manipulation of human behavior to achieve a desired result. Whether you’re attempting to gain access to an environment that you wouldn’t normally be granted access to, you require a favor from somebody who might not grant it, or you are attempting to break into a new social circle, the skill set of the social engineer will come into play.

The process of social engineering begins with intelligence gathering. Whether you’re attempting to gain access to a club or break into a new social circle, this is where it all starts.

There are many ways and many reasons to start with intel, which will vary with the time, place, and what you’re attempting to access. Intelligence gathering can be as long and in-depth, or as short and informal a process as you want to make it and is practical. You may spend weeks or months doing research on a company and people before a business deal or moving jobs, or you may only have a couple of seconds to size somebody up as you meet them on the street or in the bar. But the basic idea is the same: to obtain as much useful information about another person as possible so you have the most favorable interaction you can with them.

Within the government spy agencies, there are dozens of "INT's:" signals (SIGINT), measures and signature (MASINT), geospatial (GEOINT), cyber (CYBINT), etc. Many are available only at the corporate or government level, requiring technology or legal access that you are unlikely to obtain. Some are available, but impractical or illegal for you to realistically use like using drones, GPS tracking, or hacking to learn more about a subject. That leaves us with two primary modes of intelligence gathering for normal use: Open Source Intelligence (OSINT) and Human Intelligence (HUMINT).

OSINT: There are those who balk at the idea of intelligence gathering against "regular" people. If you don't at least spend a few minutes with Google, Facebook, LinkedIn, or other available sources checking out a prospective date, business associate, or employer, you are doing yourself a disservice.

Open Source Intelligence will often reveal a plethora of information: company specifics, office locations, corporate hierarchy, and the names, e-mail addresses, and phone numbers of key players. A corporate website isn’t the only place online to gain information; blogs, social media profiles, videos, newspaper articles, and more can all provide valuable intelligence. Don’t overlook the importance of even the smallest piece of information; it might be some minor tidbit that ends up getting you in the door.

If you are trying to get a new job, who do you think the company would rather hire, somebody who walked in off the street or submitted a resume online with little specific knowledge of the corporation, or somebody with a tailored resume, delivered to the correct person, who is as intimately familiar with their operations as any outsider can be
If you’re trying to become a member of an exclusive club, OSINT can reveal everything from necessary dress codes, operating hours, special events, and key players.

This information is usually very easy to obtain and could make the difference between being granted access to the most exclusive environments, or being left out in the cold. Take a few minutes to do the research and always use it to your advantage.

NOTE: Just as you should be checking out others, understand that others will check you out. Spend time researching yourself online and see what information is out there and available. What, if any, of that information do you "own" or can you curate?

Do you own YourName.com?
Do you watch what you post on Facebook?
Is your LinkedIn profile up to date?
Twitter? Blogger? WordPress? Instagram?
Is your information correct and up to date on educational, professional, or company websites?

Remember, we are living in (or at least moving towards) an age where everything about you is available, online, for free, to anybody who wants it. College acceptance, internships, jobs, and promotions are now made or broken by your online or social media presence. Is that information accurate, up to date, and positive? Does it make you look like a good guy, or a douchebag? Take the time to update everything you can and make sure your presence online is a good one.

HUMINT: Human Intelligence is the next step. It can be both the precursor to your real target or used against the target itself.

Once you’ve identified key players or employees, what information can you get from them?

Do they go to the same bar or club after work?
What other hobbies or interests do they have that you can exploit?
If certain company employees always go to the same bar after work, can you get close to them there?

By striking up a conversation, you could gain inside information that will help you get a job or receive preferential treatment in contract negotiation (does the company offer special terms that are not advertised to the public? Are there corporate rivalries you can use to your advantage? Is the company working on a problem that you can help solve?).

If you’re attempting to break into a new social circle or club, what other interests do its members share that you can use to your advantage? If some group members hang out at a certain bar, or one is a rock climber, or loves classic cars, can you use this information to befriend them? People love talking about themselves – their desires or their woes – and using anything you have in common builds instant rapport; rapport that can be used to your advantage.

Part of HUMINT and intel gathering is the art of reading people. Most important for your daily use is the cold read. This is the ability to know who noticed you, what their interest in you is, and anything else you can deduct via their appearance and mannerisms alone.

To understand how to gauge interest, use this trick taken from social coach James Maclane. Put the most good-looking guy you know in a perfectly fitting jacket and go out with him. Walk a few feet behind him and watch everybody else’s reactions as he walks by. You will notice the men who are intimidated or intrigued by him, and you’ll notice the women that are interested in or attracted to him. Once you understand what these emotions look like, you’ll be able to start seeing these reactions to your own presence and know that those looks are meant for you. This helps build confidence as you approach more people.

The other aspect of the cold read is the ability to size a person up immediately — know what they do and what makes them tick. Taking note of a person’s style, their body language, what context you’re seeing them in, and various other factors, you can often figure out what they do for a living, what their hobbies are, and if they in a good mood or bad one. With practice and experience built from approaching and making conversation with many different groups of people, you will be able to gauge much of this with pretty decent accuracy.

Whether you’re at a professional conference or walking into a bar, the ability to know who has noticed you, who you’ll likely get the best response from, and what makes them tick is an invaluable skill.

Most people are apprehensive about approaching new strangers or starting new conversations. Don’t be this guy.

Talk to everybody. Social coach Nick Sparks calls this “dropping hooks.” There’s no need to overthink how to make an approach, and the guys who do this end up looking nervous and not coming across as genuine.

Make eye contact, approach with a facial expression that conveys “everything is okay” [smile!] and say something. Anything. “Hey guys, how’s it going?” “Great day today, huh?” “Looks like you’re having fun there.”

As long as you’re making eye contact and you approach with confidence, you’re likely to get a favorable response.

A great approach creates a moment — something that will flip the script and jar the other person out of their hum-drum reality and make them focus on you. This can be as simple as great eye contact and smiling (or a mischievous smirk, or a wink), or more elaborate like a magic trick, a bet, or a purposefully engineered meeting.

Tynan, in his book “Make Her Chase You,” relates a story of running his shopping cart into a woman’s cart, then exclaiming “Hey, watch where you’re going!” with a big smile. She started to apologize before realizing what had really happened and they both got a good laugh out of it. Marcus Oakey, in a presentation to The 21 Convention, relates boarding a plane and betting the stewardess a kiss if she could guess his seat number.

The outcome of these examples doesn’t really matter — what matters is that they both jarred the other party out of their boredom and gave them an interesting experience.

Everything follows getting that first favorable response, but don’t worry if it doesn’t come. A stranger can’t form an appropriate opinion of you in just a couple of seconds.

If you approach somebody and get blown off — you get no response or a negative one — don’t take it personally. The person may be having a bad day, they may be having problems at work or at home, or they may be just nervous to talk to somebody new.

In any case, you can always use this as a learning experience – their response isn’t a reflection of you personally — but you can use it to gauge your technique. Was your posture off, did you forget to smile, use the wrong words?

Whether or not you have a specific goal, you should be making approaches constantly. Guys, girls, groups, singles. Go up and talk to everybody. You’ll get tons of good responses, and tons of bad ones. Every one of these is a learning experience and can be used to learn more about what works, when, and why.

After the approach, it’s time to get talking. But holding a conversation like a man is more than simply asking questions, telling stories, or dominating the conversation and not letting anybody else speak.

Often referred to as a “reality distortion field,” the seductive powers of the most charismatic people can be mastered with just a bit of simple practice.

The most charismatic people are always described the same way — “he made me feel like I was the most important person in the room.” A master at this, Bill Clinton was described thusly: “It’s not that he seduces women. It’s that he seduces everyone.” You want to be that guy.

The first order of business is to be confident, positive, and optimistic.

Charm and charisma flow from positivity and optimism, not negativity or pessimism. Even when you are not feeling that way, putting on the show will make you more confident and upbeat. Remember from the Attitude Basics section: stand up straight, smile, and focus on the positive.

Eye contact is the easiest thing to start working on. As you’re walking down the street or going about your daily business, practice looking everybody you pass in the eye. With a neutral to positive expression on your face, just look into their eyes, then look away. As you get more confident, you can hold their gaze for longer.

Practice this with waitresses, salespeople, and others you come in contact with a friendly expression on your face and you’ll have better eye contact skills than most in a very short amount of time. Especially when dealing with women, but equally applicable to almost anybody, is the idea that if you’re not spellbound by the incredible power you can wield with your eyes, then you’re not making enough eye contact.

The manipulation of personal space is essential to building charismatic confidence.

In general, a person’s sense of personal space is influenced by your eye contact, by whether or not you’re facing directly towards them, touching them, the tone of your voice, and whether you’re talking about them, or a more neutral object. Too many of these happening at once will raise somebody’s “get out of my personal space” alarms, but subtle changes will yield much different results. Experiment with all of these.

If you have to stand squared directly up with somebody, try leaning back to help them relax.
Coming in at an angle, a light touch on the arm, or lowering your voice will put somebody at ease while allowing you in their personal space, creating an instant connection with nothing but your body language.

Another powerful tool is mirroring body language. You should already be locked-on with your eye contact, and now we can take this a step further.

When they look away, you’ll want to look away in the same direction. If they turn direction, turn with them. As you do this, you will also want to mirror their RSVP — the rhythm, speed, volume, and pitch of their voice. Doing this, you seem to synchronize with the other person, making the moment more intimate and them more at ease with you.

Whether you’re chatting up a business contact or a beautiful woman, you want to be fully present and engaged in the conversation. Active listening has been likened to a kid listening to a story, or an overly empathetic child. You are tuned-in, paying attention, and want to know more. The most charismatic people both relate to — “oh, yeah, I did that one time/I know what that’s like” — and personalize — “what was that like?/how was that?”. Focus on the other person and their story, not about what you have or want to add to it.

As the conversation develops, follow the breadcrumbs, and drop some yourself. These are the pieces that the other person didn’t elaborate on, but that when brought up, will help continue or rekindle the conversation. You should constantly be making note of things that you can use. When the other person mentions a drink, a location, event, idea, or anything else that you have experience with, make note of it for future use.

In a group setting, remember that you’re never just talking with one person. Engage the group, rather than leaving them dangling on the periphery. This is especially important in the context of social engineering if you need something; the person who initially captivated your interest might not be the person who can help you. Even if you’re talking to a group of women and there is one you’re interested in, you need to engage her friends and give everybody a good time.

A woman’s friends are gatekeepers — you need to win them over as surely as you need to win her over.

In any conversation, don’t engage in one-upping. Your stories and experiences may well be cooler — you may be the more interesting guy — but as soon as you start trying to outdo somebody, the conversation turns into a competition.

Done between guys, this can be seen as a “my dick is bigger than yours” competition and is a turn-off to all involved. In any setting, the need to outdo the other person is a sign of weakness. Rather than trying to outdo them, celebrate their accomplishments, ask questions, or otherwise directly engage them. Doing this makes you an integral part of the conversation and you’ll win their affection and respect. Trying to one-up them or slinking away feeling sorry for yourself is a guaranteed loss for you and whatever you hoped to accomplish by engaging in the dialog in the first place.

As you do all of this, you’re building rapport — developing a harmonious relationship that fosters trust and openness.

Focus on commonalities.
Maximize your similarities and minimize your differences with the other person.
People like to be seen as right, so keep your ego in check. Listen to them or validate what they’re saying.

As a general rule, people feel obligated to “return the favor.” Use this reciprocal altruism to your advantage by using compliments or “giving gifts” in order to make them feel indebted to you.

All the above can be used to steer the conversation in your direction; praising the good behavior and not rewarding the bad.

When things are going well in a conversation, you’ll be warm, inviting, and engaging. Your smile, your touch, and your interest will keep the other party wanting more of the same.

When the other party starts doing something you don’t approve of, or goes in a direction you’d rather not, it’s often a simple cross of your arms, angling your body away from theirs, or an expression of disinterest that will put them back on track.

Whether you’re making headway getting information about a business, or wooing the two beautiful women into a threesome, remember that people like to be liked. You can always turn on and off your engagement and affection to achieve the desired result.

Going deeper into full-on social engineering, we have elicitation — the extraction of information without the subject feeling like they’re being interrogated. Using all the tools you’ve developed so far, you’ve made contact and developed a bond with the subject. Now you work on getting what you need.

Elicitation is arguably just asking questions designed to get a response:

• Open ended — let your target expand on thoughts or tell you a story. Useful when fishing for information or breadcrumbs and can be helpful for continuing to build rapport. Answers are not usually facts, but opinions and feelings.
• Closed ended — give you control of the conversation but can also end the conversation if you’re not careful. Used to force an answer, often either yes/no, or answers from a predefined list.
• Neutral — don’t tell the subject how we want them to answer.
• Leading — lead the target towards a specific answer or down a path.
• Assumptive — can put the target at ease by assuming something about them, their thoughts, or actions.

Generally, your line of questioning will move from less specific to more specific. Neutral → Open ended → closed ended → highly directed (last resort).

Part of mastering elicitation and social engineering is pretexting, creating a scenario that persuades our target to divulge information or otherwise help us. We don’t need to cover elaborate pretexts that involve character creation or disguises or acting like somebody you’re not (disguising yourself as a delivery guy, mechanic, salesman, etc. to gain access to people or locations), but the successful social engineer may sometimes need a subtle pretext that fits the situation.

Because elicitation may not always be done from the position of power, it can be useful to be able to act less dominant than you are. Feigned ignorance, deliberately false statements, or oblique references to information or events will often prompt the other person to divulge more information.

On the other hand, flattery, mutual interest, assumed knowledge, or confidence baiting (“just between you and me…”) will open other people up. Knowing this, you will want to make sure that any pretexting that you are engaging in fits the situation and what you’re trying to accomplish.

When it’s time to leave — because you’ve extracted the information you need, the conversation has fizzled out, or one party has something else to attend to — you want to end on a positive note.

If you’ve discussed making plans but haven’t exchanged contact information yet, now is the time to do that and solidify those plans.

If not making plans, or the conversation has just stalled, you still want to leave on a positive note. Something along the lines of “Thanks. This has been great. I hope you guys have a great rest of the [day/night]. I’ll see you around.” This is incredibly important.

The warm goodbye leaves the door open to future conversation; if the person you were talking to just hadn’t warmed up, or was just having a bad day, there’s no reason to try to drag out a bad conversation. Just give them the warm goodbye and go back to what you were otherwise doing. Very often, you’ll give somebody the warm goodbye, only to have them come back up to you later with renewed interest.

This is also important because other people watch your interactions. If you were talking to a group of women and starting to get shut out, instead of slinking away with your tail between your legs, you give them the warm goodbye and leave with your head held high. Others watching this encounter will be more likely to judge the group you were talking to negatively, rather than laughing at the guy that just got shot down.

The warm goodbye also breeds your own confidence. Regardless of how the conversation went, you will leave feeling better about the interaction, which makes it more likely that you’ll have other more positive interactions in the future.

Regardless of how things go at the various points in the interactions you have with others, you always want to be able to dispassionately evaluate them.

Every interaction, from the approach, to the conversation, to the goodbye, can be a learning experience allowing you to expand on what works, and change what doesn’t.

The highest form of social engineer — the master manipulator — has the intelligence, the knowledge, and the experience to approach almost any group, with almost any agenda, and get those within to comply with his wishes. Of course, this is useful for the con-men of society, but with even a limited application of the social engineer’s skill set, you will reap massive rewards as new groups, new opportunities, new friends, and new women open up to you.

It’s time to get out there and start talking to people!