Tag: interview anxiety

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The psychology of job interviews part 1 of 5

The job interview is one of the most nerve-racking experiences you have to face. The reason you fear the job interview is down to the psychology of the interview process. In this series of ‘job interview psychology,‘ you will learn 5 psychological processes that are in play, that effect your job interview success, without you even knowing about it.

Job Interview Psychology 1 of 5 – rewards and fears

The psychology of the job interview starts prior to you attending the actual job interview itself.

DOES THIS SOUND LIKE YOU?

Today is the day of your job interview! You scared, nervous because you haven’t prepared. You received your job interview date 2 weeks previously; you had planned to rehearse the job interview question but just never gotten around to it and there’s a psychological reason for this

Job Interview Psychology

Are you a future optimist? Psychologists Arie Kruglanski and Torey Higgins, have found that we have two motivational systems: the “thinking” or “doing” system

We believe we think and then take action. But humans are only skilled at using one of these systems at a time. For job interview preparation we are good at planning what we need to do to be successful at the job interview:

I will research the organisation

I will prepare job interview questions and answers

I will rehearse my interview presentation

This planning creates a positive feeling – you have achieved something and because you have spent time organising your job interview preparation, you allow yourself to complete the actual action of job interview preparation tomorrow – as a reward

The future optimist – you believe this plan is great, and tomorrow you will focus on the action taking. When tomorrow comes, something, more important, takes over so you plan to take action the following – what does an extra 24hrs matter …you have a plan!

Sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system

Another system is also in place that affects your job interview motivation. Within the autonomic nervous system sits the sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous system. These two systems work in opposite ways; “the sympathetic nervous system (SNS) meditates the body response to arousing circumstances. for example, producing the famed ‘flight pr fight’ stress response” (Robert Sapolsky – Behave; book 2017) The parasympathetic nervous system “PNS is about calm, vegetative states” (Robert Sapolsky – Behave; book 2017)

How do these two systems effect your job interview preparation?

The Sympathetic nervous system speeds up your heart rate, stops your digest process and sends the fight or flight stress signal – we don’t like to feel this way. When you think about a forthcoming job interview your perspective of the situation is ‘life or death’ if I don’t succeed in the job interview I have failed. These thoughts lead to the activation of the SNS.

Whereas, the PNS – parasympathetic nervous system, slows down the heart rate, activates the digestive system and sends out the relaxation signal. This is a state we all like, the state that we all desire be in.

It’s simple; the thought of a job interview sets of the SNS – and we want to avoid this feeling. Moving the ‘thinking about job interview preparation’ task to tomorrow releases the PNS – the state we crave. This leads to you self sabotaging, we have planned so now we can watch TV (releases SNS) and focus on job interview preparation tomorrow (removes PNS)

The Reward System

The final emotion in play is the reward system. The brain’s reward is via the release of dopamine – the happy chemical. When you receive the job interview offer from an organisation, you receive a big dollop of dopamine. If you have a strong application and receive regular job interview dates, the amount of dopamine decreases with each job interview offer. Constant success reduces dopamine releases.

The dopamine system if fired of in anticipation of, rather then achieving, a task (unless the achievement of a task doesn’t result in a reward, then we get very angry IE we think we will be successful in a job interview and are then told we have been unsuccessful)

The job interview request comes into your in-box; dopamine release. Now you have to prepare for the job interview; If you feel confident you will expect a positive outcome (where you will receive another dopamine release and a job offer) but the level of dopamine reduces as you prepare for the job interview (taking action doesn’t release as much dopamine as the anticipation of a reward) and surprisingly the dopamine release is less when you are offered the job compared to the release of dopamine you received from being invited to the job interview (unless this situation is rare for you)

If you fear the job interview, the dopamine receptors are blocked and you become stressed. Because you desire dopamine, you have learned where you can get this from; the thought of a chocolate cake, as an example. So instead of job preparation activities (that make you feel stressed because this is a fearful activity for you), you eat cake, waste precious time, but don’t care because you have your chocolaty hit of dopamine.

To be successful in the job interview you need to be proactive in job interview preparation. You need to evolve your mind to reduce job interview fear and increase job interview excitement.

In the next article, you will learn about job interview subconscious bias and how to make these work in your favor

Interview Pyschology 2 of 5 – Unconscious bias

Job Interview Advice

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Sample Interview Questions and Answers

Curveball Interview Questions and Answers

The key preparation for a job interview is to create a list of sample curveball interview questions. From this list, you can create strong job interview answers by tailoring your experience, skills and qualities to that of the job specification.

Your sample interview answers need to do three things; one – inform the interviewer that you have the required skills, two – show enthusiasm and passion, three – highlight a unique selling point.

This is even more important when you are asked curveball interview questions, these are job interview questions that sound random, but in actual fact have a hidden meaning.

Continue reading “Sample Interview Questions and Answers”

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Delete Negative Self Talk Prior to The Job Interview

Get Confident – Delete Negative Self Talk Prior to the Job Interview

Imagine that you wasn’t nervous, fearful, scared prior to the job interview. If you were more confident, how would this impact on the job interview outcome? If you truly believed in yourself how would this increase your ability to sell yourself in the job interview? If you could communicate with confidence would you increase your job offers?

The number one killer in the job interview is nervousness. This state of fear create negative self talk which turns fear into anxiety, ruining your chances of a successful job interview. Here is how to beat you job interview anxiety.

Set Up Your Own Coaching Business 

 Job Interview Fear

Everyone has an internal voice prior to the job interview. If your internal voice is like a devil in your head, telling you how rubbish you are, putting you down and making you feel worthless.

By killing this devil your head you can create the feeling of control.

Ask the devil what is his positive intent (everything your subconscious does has a positive intent)? Then ask what I can do to improve, develop and evolve? These questions create insight. Common answers include; practice your interview questions, improve your delivery style or attend a mock interview

Job Interview Fear

Take Control

Your mind is yours! You can take control and with control becomes power.

When you hear the negative self talk about your forthcoming job interview, take notice of the voice tone, volume and diction.

Repeat the message but this time change the volume, lower it and notice the difference in your emotional response. Turn the voice into the sound of a cartoon character and again notice how this changes how you feel.

By changing your internal voice you can easily change how you feel. You can even take this one step further and say positive affirmations using a confident, powerful internal dialog.

Interview questions and answers

Overcome Job Interview Fear

When you tell yourself you will fail the job interview, it feels like you are bullying yourself. Instead of taking your dinner money, your internal devil is taking your opportunities.

To increase confidence, imagine you can see the character who is stating this limiting belief. Often people will see a big overbearing, larger then life character. Juts looking at this figure makes you tremble with fear.

To take control. Pause this image. Then imagine shrinking the image in front of you, so it seems that you are standing above the person. Make the person smaller and smaller, until you feel more powerful.

The way you visualize your thoughts creates different perspectives, different emotional responses to the same situation – in this case the job interview.

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3 Interview Confidence Tricks

3 Job Interview Confidence Tricks

Confidence is the key to job interview success.

The nervous, timid and anxious interviewee lacks rapport, struggles to get their point across and often comes across weak and pathetic.

As well as preparing your interview answers you need to prepare your job interview confidence.

Set Up Your Own Coaching Business 

Job Interview Confidence 1

Pro-activeness not procrastination

In the weeks leading up to the job interview you need to prepare your interview answers. Start by improvising what you would say, knowing at this stage that you will make mistakes.

After each rehearsal, reflect and edit your script. This pro-activeness increases memory. When asked a question, the answers will flow.

Many failed interviewees will replace pro-activeness with procrastination. The fear of the job interview stops them preparing which can only lead to interview failure.

Job Interview Confidence 2

Deep Breathing

The easiest, and most effective way to decrease nervous and increase confidence is with deep breathing.

By breathing in deeply in, lifting your whole diaphragm, holding it for a few seconds before releasing the breath you will naturally  calm down. If you repeat this 3-5 times your interview anxiety will disappear.

Job Interview Confidence 3

Become an Actor

People, generally, don’t like to talk about themselves. Worst then that, rarely does an individual like to state out loud their strengths and qualities.

To overcome this imagine being an actor. Play a part – a more confident version of yourself. Change your stance, so you stand like the confident person you are playing. Actors perform their best when they feel the emotions they want to express with their performance. Feel the confidence you will express when you play this role in the job interview

By focusing on confidence, you will feel more confident.

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Be Your Confident Self During Your Interview: Beating Anxiety

Stay Confident During Your Interview

Nobody likes interviews, but some people are better at them than others.

For some people, the excitement of actually getting a job interview is usually swiftly followed by panic. And for some people, the panic and anxiety induced by a job interview is sometimes enough to call the whole thing off. But then, it’s a passage we all must go through if we’re going to get to the places we want to go.

However, that doesn’t make them any easier. To help you get through your interview unscathed, we’ve put together some useful tips. Heed our ways and, while you might not quite be your dazzling, confident best, you’ll be closer to that version of yourself than the opposite.

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Become Superman (For Two Minutes)

How would you feel if I told you you could give yourself the gift of confidence?

Well, you can. The ‘Superman Pose’, as it’s known, is a trick of the mind that has shown to chemically give ourselves the boost we need to feel confident. And the best thing about it is that it’s so simple.

Just stand in front of your mirror, put your hands on your hips, and look at yourself as you stand tall and proud.

For reasons yet unknown, after two minutes you’ll have improved your confidence levels. At the very least, it can’t hurt.

Affirmations

Some of the most confident celebrities, including Will Smith, use affirmations to give themselves the confidence they need to attack the day.

On the morning of your interview, loudly proclaim to yourself just what you’re going to achieve that day. “I’m going to nail this interview”, you might say. Ask yourself how, and answer: “because I’m a talented, confident man/woman and I’m more than capable of delivering results”.

Breath Slowly

People with more profound levels of anxiety can feel fearful and uncertain on a daily basis, not just on the days when it comes to job interviews.

For those people, gaining some confidence on the morning of the interview won’t cut it: they’ll need to manage their anxiety when they’re sitting in the waiting room and also during the interview.

One technique is to using breathing techniques to control the anxiety. You’ll be amazed at how quickly breathing can have an impact on our calmness levels.

Before you go into the interview room, take a few moments to prepare yourself. A useful tool is the 4-7-8 rule; breathe in slowly through your nose for 4 seconds, hold your breath for 7 seconds, and then exhale for 8 seconds.

Repeat this for a moment and your stress hormones will have lowered and you’ll feel calmer.

Chew Gum and Avoid Caffeine

Some of the things we feel in the build up to an interview date back to our hunter gatherer days. By cranking up the pressure, we’re keeping ourselves in fight or flight mode at levels that anybody would struggle to cope with.

To combat this, watch what your eat and drink.

Caffeine, for instance, will help you feel alert but will also increase your heart rate and make you more anxious. If you must give yourself a wake up boost before your interview, go on a run – you’ll be surprised just how energising exercise can be.

Additionally, carry some gum with you and chew it on the way to your interview – it’ll link back to your basic, primeval state when, way back when, being able to eat in peace meant we were under no threat from predators.

Not only will you feel more relaxed, your breath will also be fresh!

Fail to Prepare, Prepare to Fail

There’s plenty of tips and tricks to make yourself more confident, but it’ll count for nothing if you do them and then haven’t prepared properly for your interview.

When that happens, no technique will be able to cover your back – you’ll be found out. The best possible method to being confident in an interview is by truly knowing what you’re talking about inside and out.

Learn the material, have your friends test you, and make sure that if anything stops from getting the job, it won’t be because you haven’t prepared. You might still be nervous for the first couple of minutes of the interview, but eventually you’ll show you do indeed know what your stuff!

Article by Gemma Rainford

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3 Reasons To Fear Job Interviews

Job interviews create anxiety, fears or trigger of phobias in most job applicants.

There are 3 key reasons why people fear job interviews, today I will explain why anxiety ruins peoples job interview and how you can overcome this phobia inducing reasons to fear the job interview.

Interview Fear 1 – Lack of Practice 

Rarely do we attend job interviews. As with any skill, if you fail to practice you will never reach your peak performance.

On average, interviewees only prepare for around 1-2 hours! This is crazy when the outcome of the job interview can change your life, your financial situation and your career progression.

Interview procrastination stops people from being successful. To practice you can;

  • Research sector job interview and questions
  • Attend a mock interview and learn from the feedback
  • Reflect on a previous job interview 
  • Write and re-write out job interview questions and answers
  • Watch interview YouTube clips, pause the video after each question and answer the question as if you were attending an interview. After watching the answer on the video, compare this answer with yours 

Interview Fear 2 – Unpredictability 

We are all scared of the unknown.

Because attending a job interview, is in the main, a rarity, anxiety will increase.  Even confident individuals become nervous in the job interview, especially when a random job interview is asked.

You need to learn the skill of thinking on your feet confidently, speaking impromptu and answering questions spontaneously.

Once you can confidently deliver answers unrehearsed, you will reduce your fears and anxiety and become a more competent interviewee.

Interview Fear 3 – Niggling Devil in Your Head  

When working with clients to improve their interview confidence they all have one thing in common, everyone says that their anxiety increases because they have negative self-talk.

You need to kill this devil in your head if you ever want to get over your interview phobia.

By changing the way our negative self-talk expresses itself we can change the associated negative emotion.

  1. Listen to the negative self-talk
  2. Replay this voice, but this time sssssslllllooooowwwwww down the words, really drag them out and became aware of the change at the emotional level
  3. Next, speed the voice up so it plays really fast and squeaky
  4. Finally, turn down the volume of the voice so you can hardly hear it
  5. Use whichever technique takes away the negative associated emotion

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Managing Interview Stress

Often people become stressed in new situations; anything from a first date to attending a social event. Stress can increase when all eyes are on you which is why public speaking and job interviews are one of most common stress inducers.

Stress can increase when the importance of the activity is high. This is why job interviews are highly stressful. The job interview situation is rare, which increase stress, for many the job interview has high importance as many people require a salary to pay bills and mortgages) and in the job interview you are the focus of attention which can multiply your stress levels.

Stress is part of your fight or flight response. Your mind perceives a future situation as stressful and creates an associated negative image – a job interview going badly with you stuttering, forgetting what to say and looking embarrassed. Your mind then releases chemicals in your body so you feel stressed and this feeling of stress reinforces the negative image – creating a stress loop

Breaking The Loop

As with any stressful “eyes on you” situation, practice makes perfect. If you practice your interview with an interview coach, predicting the interview questions, preparing answers, learning how to sell yourself and how to reinforce your unique selling point, as well as reflecting on interview answers and tweaking each answer until they are embedded in your mind you will come across not only as confident but as the ideal candidate.

The lack of practice is the number one reason why applicants are nervous in job interviews with 90% of interviewees only preparing for a job interview for 15 minutes! As any confident public speaker will tell the key to speaking (and communication is the number tool for passing job interviews) well is rehearsing and rehearsing and rehearsing. It is this repetition of practice that makes the confident orator look as if they are talking of the cuff about a subject or question they are asked, where in reality they have practised their delivery style, tone change, pitch, body langue and gestures, eye contact and how to get their point across.

This practice decreases stress while boosting confidence, self-esteem and your interview expertise.

Creating Positive Visualisations

Your mind’s eye creates negative images of job interviews that increase your stress levels. These thoughts and dreams can create so much worry and anxiety that some people will decide against attending the job interview.

If your perceived perception of your interview is damaging your chance of a job offer then this next technique, which only takes around 3 minutes to complete will give you back your confidence.

Step 1 – Think about your next job interview (this will be an anxious/nervous movie) image with most people seeing the image as an associated movie – seeing it from their own eyes.

Step 2 – Pause the interview movie and push the image away from you so you can see the edges of the image

Step 3 – Drain out the colour, turning the picture black and white and put a frame around the picture

Step 4 – Move the image future and future away from you until it becomes a dot  – at this stage your negative emotions will have vanished

Step 5 – Imagine yourself confident at an interview; make this image big and bright and bring it closure and closure to you until you start to feel these confident feelings.

If you repeat this exercise every day for 2 weeks your mind will change the associated emotions (from nervousness to confidence) attached to the thought of a job interview. When you next think of an upcoming interview your mind will focus on the new confident interview image you have created rather than the old nervous negative movie you use to play.

Being able to control how you feel during a job interview by using the visualising technique as well as rehearsing your interview answers and selling points, you will have a powerful combination that will help come across natural and confident during the job interview and this can only lead to more job offers.

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How to Answer the Interview Question Are you applying for any other jobs?

How to Answer the Interview Question “Are you applying for any other jobs?”

Explanation of the Question:

Of course, you are, every interviewer knows you are looking for work and it’s highly unlikely that you only have one interview lined up.

Explain why you are looking for other work and follow this up by telling the interviewer how much you want to work for their company.

Employers like to offer jobs to people who will accept them and/or not leave after a couple of weeks for a better job offer.

Why? Recruitment can cost companies around 33% of their profits!

Example Interview Answer

“Yes, I am looking at other jobs in this industry as I know this is the type of work I will excel in. I have researched your company and feel this is the type of company I would really fit into”