I worked with a bunch of Sales people back when I was running Twilio’s Enterprise Hackathon program, which went fully virtual during the pandemic.
I was perplexed at how often I’d hop on Zoom and they had put zero effort into improving their A/V.
“You spend thousands of dollars a year on wardrobe and dry cleaning because you believe your appearance conveys competence and confidence, and now here you are conducting all your business over Zoom and…”
I’m into photography, so when lockdowns hit I found myself bored with quality good gear lying around. I ordered an HDMI capture card and spent a year of endless back-to-back zoom calls dialing in my setup.
You don’t need to go that far. There’s a few moves you can make to drastically improve how you’re perceived on Zoom.
Below are some of the quick tips I share with folks. If you want to go deeper, my fried Matt Stauffer published this article just before the pandemic, and it still holds up. I really like that he gives a S / M / L approach with reference images.
Easiest impact you can make is a good light. Good lighting is more important than a good camera. (Fun fact, “photograph” means to write with light).
I like the Elgato Key Lights. You can get by with one.
If nothing else, make sure you’re not backlit. A lot of folks unintentionally backlight themselves by sitting with their back to a window. If you’re going to do that, you need a powerful light on your face, otherwise your camera exposes for the light behind you and renders you dark.