The feeling of anxiety and butterfly in the stomach is quite common before a job interview. You can perform better if you know how to manage anxiety during the job interview. Without a proper mechanism to manage the stress will lead to unguarded and nervous responses during the interview. You can control your anxiety to be more alert and respond carefully to important job interview questions.
The research and our own experience in real life have shown that hiring managers would like to hire a confident candidate answering their questions. The interviewer will prefer a candidate with self-confidence and eagerness to work independently. You will be confident when you trust yourself. The interviewer knows that you are a confident and not bravado person when you answer their questions confidently and in a relaxed way.
Is It Common To Have Anxiety Before The Job Interview
We know that anxiety before attending the job interview is nothing new. Even most talented public speakers and veteran performers face the same stress before they go to stages for performance.
and you have to
manage it for positive result
Even Michael Bay of the movie -“Transformer” fame had a problem delivering the keynote address at CES in 2014. He walked off the stage after the teleprompter failed. Most experienced speakers have the fear of performing in front of the public or unknowns. This social anxiety is known as stage fright.
This feeling is not enjoyable for anyone, and yet this is unavoidable. This is the fear of something can go wrong during the interview or blurting out unguarded response to probing questions. Even the most successful business personality have Impostor syndrome. Imposter syndrome is another form of anxiety when highly successful individual doubts their accomplishments or talents and fear of being exposed as a fraud.
You may feel assured that you are not alone in experiencing the stress before a job interview. But the vital question which will make a difference between succumbing to those stresses or overcoming those stress is the knowledge on how to manage your stress before attending the job interview.
The job interview required us to be more alert to understand the verbal and non-verbal communication and care on our response to the critical questions. Thankfully we have various resources in hand to manage the stress and feel more relax before the interview.
Why We Face Anxiety Of The Job Interview
We have to understand the root cause behind the stress before attending a job interview. We feel stress before attending any task to achieve our goal. The anxiety and experience of stress can be physical or psychological.
As per the Psychologist, some level of stress is good for motivation to perform to the best of individual ability. But each of us has our own parameter to perform well under anxiety. When the stress level goes up beyond our capacity to manage, then we experience anxiety.
For example, we feel physical stress to walk on a treadmill and psychological stress to achieve a distance or burn some calories. That is the reason we frequently keep looking at the display monitor to find out calories burned or distance covered. We feel stress until we reach the objective. After achieving the pre-set target of distance or calories burned, we feel good about our performance and feel the effect of endorphins.
Sometimes physical and psychological stress overcomes us before we reach our objectives. The high level of stress results in discontinuing our exercise before reaching the pre-set goal. Similarly, we attend a job interview to achieve desired results in an unknown environment. The fear of uncertainty combines with a vested interest to get success in achieving the desired result leads to anxiety or a high level of stress.
The fear of unknown or question of the unknown is the most divisive factor in job interview stress. The prospective employer can ask various kinds of questions to the job seekers to understand their experience. The interviewer would always like to know the approach of job seekers to find solutions to a new problem using their past experience. A candidate with a vast wealth of knowledge and work experience can have a gap in their knowledge.
You as a candidate will bound to feel the anxiety before the interview if you are more worried about the lack of your knowledge. Feel confident about your wealth of knowledge. Do not let the fear of the unknown to overtake the confidence of a wealth of knowledge.
How Stress Build-Up Before A Job Interview?
Some of us feel anxiety due to the fear of coming across difficult questions and may not have the right answers. When we try to think repeatedly about the difficult questions from the hiring manager, then most of us try to avoid this at all costs. But the most intrigued thing is that when we think about these unwanted situations repeatedly, then our brain also processes it as a negative thought. The negative thoughts strengthen our behavior to avoid negative feelings.
The thought to avoid negative feelings overtake our interview preparation. The negative thoughts overpower the positive experience of attending an interview. Job interviews give us the experience to know more about our capability to analyze and answer probing questions. This is an exciting experience, and those probing questions make us realize that we have untapped potentials. But the repeated thought of the negative feeling of poor performance overtakes the joy of knowing our potential for creative thinking.
The stress and anxiety felt by our brain can be avoided by repeatedly going through the experience of facing the probing questions. The tensions of not knowing the willingness of interviewers to be receptive to our ideas will be there throughout the job search process. We can practice the interview, again and again, to make the feeling habituated.
How To Manage Anxiety Of The Job Interview – Practice, Practice, Practice
It was a historic day on January 21, 2012, when President Obama was sworn in for the second term as the President of the United States. Millions of people enjoyed the live telecast of singer Beyonce performing the Star-Spangled Banner, the national anthem of the United States at the inauguration. But there was a report that the singer had pre-recorded her vocal.
The star called a press conference to clarify the rumors around miming. Beyonce started the press conference by asking all the reporters to stand before giving a beautiful live rendition of the national anthem. Then she confirmed that she mimed during the national anthem at the inauguration. She informed that her decision to mime the track was triggered by the weather, delays, and “no proper soundcheck”.
There is one more statement from her during the conference that shows her commitment to her work. “I am a perfectionist, and one thing about me is that I practice until my feet bleed and I did not have time to rehearse with the orchestra,” Beyonce told. Due to a lack of rehearsal time, she did not feel comfortable taking a risk.
This event indicates that even the great performers of our time believe in practicing and practicing before going for the final performance. That is how they manage their risk of mediocre performance. You have to practice your interview skills again and again to manage the anxiety of job interviews. Start practicing interviews with your friends or on your own to reduce your stress of the interview. You can gradually reduce your negative feelings by exposing yourself to receptive and hostile interview questions.
How To Feel Relaxed And Alert Before The Job Interview
Even after repeated interview practice, you can feel the butterfly stomach before the job interviews. Each person has their own personality and ideas to relax before attending interviews. The objective of relaxation is to stop worrying about the interview and focus your energy on something else.
There are various ways to divert your attention from the interview and revitalize your energy for the interview. You can do any or any combinations of following to relax and alert for the interviews:
Sleep: Sleeping is the most overlooked medication to relax and alert for the interview. A good night of sleep before the interview day is required to revitalize your energy and help you to focus during the interview. It is proven that the white light from the phone is the source of trouble for sleep. Switch off your phone to avoid any urge to go through the phone and getting distracted from going to sleep.
Meditation: Your brain gets constant stimulus before your interview, and as any part of our body needs time to take rest. Sometimes we do not get quality sleep or sufficient time to sleep for various reasons. Meditation is a proven way to relax your mind from all the stimuli and helps the practitioner to regain focus to stay alert. Practicing meditation is very simple, and you can practice meditation before your interview to feel more relax.
Changing The Thought Process: Our anxiety is determined by the words that come to our mind while thinking about the job interview.
Jan Mizushima practice Reiki and NLP in NYC. She suggest the following five simple principles to relax before the job interview.
Just for today –
- Do not be angry.
- Do not be worried.
- Be grateful for any tiny things in life.
- Do your duty with full focus.
- Be kind to others.
Just for the sake of a try, you can follow the above five principles and evaluate if this practices helping you to manage your anxiety of the job interview.