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Tips for Beating Interview Anxiety
There’s nothing like an interview to throw an otherwise calm and collected individual off their game. Being interrogated by someone who holds the power to either give you a job or send you home empty-handed can be intimidating. And, of course, when a person is intimidated, they typically underperform.
Cognition can be confusing, jitters can be jarring, and it can be difficult to remember things like learned skills and experiences — let alone your full name — as you sit under the judgmental gaze of that seemingly all-powerful hiring manager.
If you’ve found that you struggle with interview anxiety, here are a few tips to take with you the next time you suit up and head out to meet with a hiring team.
Stress Is Normal
First things first, you need to understand that even successful people feel stressed at times. It’s a very normal emotion, and there’s nothing wrong with it. In fact, trying to completely eliminate stress isn’t a great idea — especially since it’s practically impossible to do so.
Rather, it’s something you should strive to understand and manage. Many of the tips below are ways to directly do that, but the first step is making sure that you’re approaching your interview anxiety with a realistic, management-oriented focus rather than an agenda of eradication. If…
