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