Many people suffer from anxiety, in a US study it found that around 20% of the population could suffer from an anxiety disorder.
Particular situations, such as the workplace, can increase the feeling of anxiety “It is not surprising that anxiety is an inherent part of the interview process, as the employment interview is a highly evaluative situation” (Heimberg, Keller, & Peca-Baler, 1986) source
Along with being ‘evaluated’ job applicants, and people in general, feel increased pressure when they are the centre of attention and the feeling of a lack of control.
Research around the impact of job interview anxiety has found that an anxious candidate is likely to score less on the interview scorecard than a less skilled, but more confident interviewee.
Anxiety pre-interview training and/or coaching can help to reduce job interview anxiety, and therefore increase the likelihood of a career professional gaining job offers.
Confidence, data has proven, improves the interview performance as a self-assured interview identity is more likely to give a measurable and detailed interview answer. In addition, confidence is seen as a valuable asset in an employee.
Being a confident interviewee also helps when self-promoting skills, qualities, and experiences. Relaxed applicants communicate better, a key skill in a structured job interview.
Smiling can negatively impact the job interview
Confident job applicants are more likely to express emotions through facial expressions, gestures, body language, and verbal communication. Relaxed interviewees are more likely to smile compared to nervous candidates. Smiling creates a positive loop, when we feel good, we smile. When we smile we feel good.
Therefore, a job seeker at ease in the interview process will feel good, increasing a ‘natural’ smile. A number of studies have found that when a person observes a smiling face, the observing brain releases the feel-good chemical – endorphins. An interviewer through observing a smiling candidate should therefore increase likability for the applicant, increasing that applicant’s chance of gaining a high-scoring interview outcome.
Some research has found the opposite to be true. In an experiment to check the impact of smiling on the outcome of a job interview, it was found that smiling could decrease the likelihood of a job offer. The findings show the importance of job choice. Applicants were rated less favorable for careers associated with a ‘serious demeanor’ if they were found to be smiling. Another experiment (Able & Deitz, 2008) found that DJs were seen as being more hireable based on smiling vs non-smiling photographs.
Other research backs up these findings. The job stereotype can increase or decrease desire for an applicant depending on the applicant’s image compared to the interviewer’s perception. An experiment that looked at the effects of appearance on job evaluations found that the ‘beauty is beastly’ stereotype can influence hiring decisions, an ‘attractive’ female applying for a traditionally masculine job position, could be related lower than an ‘unattractive; female with the same knowledge/experience.
Smiling is often associated to attractiveness. The ‘what is beautiful is good’ bias shows that attractiveness can increase job offers, as humans link physical attractiveness to the perceived suitability of the applicant to the job role.
In the research on smiling vs job interview offers, the hiring of an applicant was maximised if smiling was lower in the middle of the interview – during the competency-based section of the interview, compared with smiling at the interview start or end.
Does power posing create power?
Highly confident and egocentric types are more likely to adopt the power pose in a job interview.
Low-confident interviewees waiting to be interviewed will slump into their chair, hunch over their phones, and adopt powerless body-language. A self-assured person adopts confident body-language, mainly open gestures compared to closed-off body-language such as self-hugging.
As discussed previously, the body and mind are connected creating positive or negative loops. Above we discussed how when we feel good we smile. And when we smile we feel good. The same connection between mind and body is a result of gestures and body language. High-status people adopt power poses. And Power poses help people to feel high status. Source.
Power poses create the feeling of power, confidence, risk tolerance, and memory for positive words and concepts, cognitive processing, thought abstraction, and being action orientated. And importantly, reduces the feeling of fear. Other techniques help with the feeling of power. One experiment found that recalling a time that a person felt powerful increases the feeling of power, but not as strong as the power effect of a power pose.
The secondary gain from a power pose is the increased feeling of confidence which creates enthusiasm throughout the job interview. And creates a calm and collected mindset that decreases anxiety and stress.
Pre-interview preparation is required, as those looking to ‘fake it’ during the interview itself may be found out. Experiments looking at the impact of acting high-status, using self-promoting stories, positive language, etc, found that the longer the job interview was the harder it became for the anxious interviewee to ‘act’ confident. An expert interviewer using a structured interview process was also able to find flaws in the applicant’s fake persona, leading to the hiring managers perceiving them as manipulative and inauthentic – a dishonest interview identity.
Using power poses prior to the interview creates confidence with improves both ‘what you say’ and ‘how you say it’. What you say encompasses positive language, self-promoting answers, and the duration of the interview answer. Whereas how you say includes volume, emotions, tonality, and being enthusiastic.
Is enthusiasm key to job interview success?
Hiring managers, as well as looking at skills, experience, and knowledge, look for potential. An interviewee’s enthusiasm is key here. A lack of enthusiasm during the recruitment process creates a negative perspective of the applicant; they are viewed as anxious, a weak communicator, and less likely to complete the job role to a satisfactory standard.
How are anxious interviewees put off by an employer?
Job interview anxiety doesn’t only affect the job hunters’ interview performance, it also has a direct impact on the acceptance of job offers for those lucky few who make it through the recruitment process. Anxious job applicants are more likely to turn-down a job offer from an employer if they, the applicant, felt nervous during the recruitment process. This is due to the psychology of projection where you attribute feelings that you are uncomfortable with on to someone or something else, IE the employer.
Employers, therefore, would benefit from adopting techniques to help relax candidates before a job interview. The benefits would be two-fold. One, a calm and relaxed interviewee will offer up a more detailed answer that the interview panel can measure against the job criteria, to help hire the most suitable employee. Second, first-choice candidates are more likely to want to accept a job role from a positive experienced job interview.
