Interview Nerves

Interview Nerves

Who here has experienced interview nerves? During a job interview you have to answer questions and make a good impression while at the same time, trying to collect enough information to decide whether you want the job or not. Of course you get nervous! Be sure you don't react to interview jitters by criticizing yourself for being nervous. ... It's only a job interview!" Ease up on the self-criticism. Let’s look at ways to calm your nerves before and during a job interview.

Over-prepare for the interview
Read, read, read and read some more in the days before your interview. Read the company's website and read what bloggers have to say about the organization and its plans and challenges. Don't be freaked out if you encounter unfamiliar terms and jargon — business people love their jargon! Look up the unfamiliar terms and soon you will feel more comfortable.

Prepare a list of questions you plan to ask the interviewer — questions about the role, the company, the work schedule and anything else you want to learn more about.

Lay out your supplies and clothes the night before
You're going to bring a notepad, a good pen and a few of your paper resumes to the interview. On the pad, you will have pre-written the questions you plan to ask. Your contact person's name and phone number and a few of your personal business cards.

Lay out these materials plus your interview outfit (sharp-looking formal business or business-casual attire depending on the company) the night before.

Do everything you can  the night before.  If you're planning to trim your beard, shave your legs or deep-condition your hair before the interview, do it the night before.

Take away as much stress as you can!

Get your plan in order
Sit down and plan out the interview logistics as carefully as you would plan an expedition to the South Pole. As every traveller knows, your careful planning will massively reduce your stress level on the day of the trip! 

Make a timeline from the minute you wake up in the morning through your post-interview celebration back at home. Overestimate travel time. Make a to-do list for the interview day including minute items like "Turn off my phone when I get to the interview facility." Plan every detail in advance — you'll be grateful you did!

Take a test drive
Drive to the interview location a day or two before or take the bus or train there to make sure you know where it is and how long it takes to get there. If you're driving, know where you will park.

Don't leave anything to chance — it's last-minute hassles that can make job interviewing so stressful!

Rehearse
Write out answers to questions you think will be asked. Your responses shouldn’t sound rehearsed or memorised but the process of putting your responses on paper will help you evaluate and organise the most effective answers.

Associate key words in your answers to certain ideas you want to express. Let those key words trigger your memory to speak in a natural manner in the interview. This way you won’t have to worry about memorising or even forgetting certain ideas.

Ask a close friend, especially if you have one in the corporate world, to interview you and give you feedback.

You can also ask your spouse or a family member to ask some key behavioural interview questions which can be sourced online and even made job-specific.

Practise your answers into a voice recorder or video recorder (smart phones have both these capabilities). Put yourself in the interviewer’s seat when you play it back and be tough on yourself in review.
The more you practise, the more you’ll become better at interviews. This way, you’ll be familiar with your skills and experience and how to relate them to any question that’s posed to you. It’s worth spending the time o
Get there early to settle in
Get to the interview facility fifteen to twenty minutes early to look around and make sure you are in the right place. There's nothing as discouraging for a job-seeker as to walk into a building on time for their interview only to hear the reception person say "You're supposed to be at our other building.“

Arriving early will give you time and space to notice the employees, vendors and/or customers in the lobby. Notice how they interact with one another. Is this company a happy, sunny place or a fearful, dark place? It matters!

Focus on observation
A great way to ease your interview nerves is to notice as many details as you can during the interview. Notice the landscaping, the construction of the building and the ornamental details in the elevator. Make a mental note of everything you see, hear and experience.

Notice how the reception person greets you and how the interviewer starts your  conversation.

Focusing on observation will help you tune out and muffle the self-destructive voice that may be telling you to stand up straight, give smarter answers to the interviewer's questions and stop crossing and uncrossing your legs.

The more closely you pay attention to the things going on around you, the less time and energy you'll have left over to get down on yourself.

Get winded
If you feel adrenaline shooting through your veins as you step into a building for a job interview — and if you have still have a few moments of time to spare — step outside again and get physical.

Walk quickly around the block two times, or quickly descend the staircase to the subway and quickly come back up. 

Your goal is to wind yourself, to take your focus out of your mind and into your body. This does wonders for your nerves


Take notes
Your notepad is great for taking notes, and lots of people find that note-taking is great for their interview nerves, too. You can jot down questions that occur to you as the interviewer is speaking (or even as you are speaking) and take note of other thoughts and observations you make while the interview is going on.

Some of the notes won't make any sense to  you when you re-read them tonight at home, but  that's okay.

Note-taking has a purpose apart from jogging your memory later on. It helps you stay focused on the conversation rather than getting outside yourself and judging your "performance."


Don't be afraid to laugh at yourself
Athletes go the Olympics to compete and they say "It's a huge thing, it's incredible to compete at the Olympics. I'm so excited to be  here, but it's also just one day in my life. I was having a great life before I got to the Olympics."

No job interview is the Olympics. The truth is that only the people who can see past your jitters deserve to be your future colleagues. Your trusty gut knows it's true. Whatever happens at the interview was supposed to happen just the way it did.

You can laugh if something amusing happens. You can laugh at yourself. You can let down your guard, and I hope you will. A job interview is an artificial situation, but your power comes through most strongly when the amazing, brilliant, real you shines forth.

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