Basically, social engineering is the art and science of getting people to comply to your wishes. It is not a way of mind control, it will not allow you to get people to perform tasks wildly outside of their normal behaviour and it is far from foolproof.

It also involves far more than simply quick thinking and a variety of amusing accents. Social engineering can involve a lot of 'groundwork', information gathering and idle chit chat before an attempt at gaining information is ever made. Like hacking, most of the work is in the preparation, rather than the attempt itself.

http://social-engineering.tribe.net