Manage Stress During Job Interviews – 10 Tips

As a job seeker, how do you manage stress during job interviews? Explore these 10 tips to know how to manage stress during job interviews.The purpose of an interview is for the company to get to know you as a potential employee. It is the employer’s chance to ask you questions about your skills, work experience, evaluate your qualifications and to see if you would fit in with the other employees. So, you have to learn how to manage stress during job interviews in order to showcase your skills and ace your job interviews.

 By Catherine Adenle

Without a doubt, for job seekers, job interviews are drawn-out and intimidating ways of making first impression to potential employers. However, it’s also an opportunity for job seekers to get on an employer’s good side, get a distinct edge over the other applicants. However, if you find that you are always stressed out before and during job interviews, there are tips that will help you to manage stress during job interviews.

Manage stress during job interviews

To manage stress during job interviews, first, remember that it is your opportunity to look at the interviewers, sell your skills, state what makes you the best candidate, showcase your attributes and sell your experience.

At an interview, you get to ask questions about the company’s business and also see if the company suits you. For any job interview, the better prepared you are beforehand, the better your chance of success. When you manage stress during job interviews, it increases your chance of walking out of the interview with a confident smile on your face and with the thought that you have the job in the bag.

Here are 10 useful tips on how to manage stress during job interviews, reduce the stress and improve your chance of success:

1. Do your homework Research the company; go on the internet and get as much information as possible, use various specialist sites such as ft.com/marketsdata to familiarize yourself with the company or organization that is interviewing you. The more you know, the closer you get to the job.

2. Prepare  Before hand, get a paper and a pen, prepare a list of interview questions that you expect to be asked and decide how to answer them.  Read through several times to understand how to answer the questions. Do not learn the answers by heart as this will increase your stress level.  The way you answer the questions is as important as the substance of your answers.

3. Plan Plan properly as this will allow you to find the best path to achieve your objectives.  You have to set out planning for the predictable and the unpredictable.  What if your car should break down or the train is late? What is going to be your next line of action? Have you got the telephone number of the company and the name of the person to call just in case?

4. Sleep For two consecutive days before the interview, ensure you get good amount of sleep. Being tired the day of your interview can make you irritable and less prepared. It is easy to get stressed due to lack of sleep.

 5. Arrive early Arrive at your interview at least 30 minutes before your interview is supposed to begin. Stay inside your car to review any notes that you may want to go through again as well as mentally prepare yourself for your upcoming interview. This will also give you plenty of time to compose yourself and freshen up before hand.

6. Relax Irrespective of how you feel, try hard to control your nerves and your body language. Always keep calm and remain composed throughout any stressful interviews. The best thing to do is to pause, take a few deep breaths, smile while you answer or response.

7. If in doubt, clarify… If in a panic, you don’t understand the question, be sure to clarify the question and the kind of answer desired. This will buy you some extra time to think about the answer to give. Never be afraid to ask questions, it is important that you ask if you are not sure.  Every so often, this is exactly what’s expected of you.

8. Give concise answers Maintain your focus on the questions and not how irrelevant or biased they sound. Avoid making an issue of the questions. Make your answers concise, sharp and straight to the point.

9. Be prepared for a discussion Don’t just answer questions, be prepared for a conversation because if you focus on the conversation you are having, you will forget about stress. Be careful not to get carried away. Focus is the answer to stress.

10. Put things in perspective. The fear of failure or disappointing others is the cause of the stress that most people feel.  That fear is then compounded by the fact that many job seekers are at a point where they have very low self-confidence, whether because they have been unemployed for sometime, or because they are unhappy about where they are. Just remember that the purpose of the questions asked is mainly to test your response.

Pe positive – look at it this way, it is only a job interview, not a life or death situation, so chill out and relax!  If you don’t get the job, you will have another chance somewhere else. To conclude, it is imperative that you make the day as uneventful as possible so that you can put all your attention into creating the best impression.  Managing stress is about the 3Ps – preparation, planning, and positivity.

Related Articles

• The Job Search: How to Prepare for a Face-to-Face Job Interview (biojobblog.com)
• 5 Sites With Job Interview Tips To Help You Ace Your Interview (makeuseof.com)
• How to Ace a Job Interview (lifescript.com)
• Career Journal: Acing That Job Interview (blogs.wsj.com)
• Tips for Ensuring a Successful Interview (encourageblogging.com)