“Being nervous isn’t bad. It just means something important is happening.”
— Michael Jordan
It’s natural to be nervous at an interview. In fact, in my experience, being nervous typically means that you are the type of person who is self-reflective, which is a great personal trait to have in life. Just not when interviewing. I myself personally was always petrified during interviews, especially early in my career.
Managers are Nervous During Interviews Too!
Why would a hiring manager be nervous during an interview? Put yourself in their shoes. A manager’s job is not “to hire” – it’s to build a team that will create results for the company and meet his or her defined expectations; whether that be increased sales revenue, on-time programming deliverables, or quality manufactured parts. That manager’s results, and how he or she will be judged at their next performance review, is largely dependent on the people in the team.
Thus, if the manager hires the wrong person, this can cause disruptions and compromises the team’s results. When a manager’s performance drops, so does his or her bonus and compensation. If bad enough, it forces them into an uncomfortable position with their manager, tarnishing their reputation with the firm, and in some cases will cost them their job! All of this directly affects them, their family, and their “addiction to food and shelter”.
Of course the manager is nervous about every new hire! This is why most managers approach the process looking for reasons not to hire you – it’s self-preservation. In most cases, it’s better not to hire at all, then to take the chance of hiring someone who may cost them their job.
Therefore, during the interview process, in the back of the manager’s mind, they are always thinking of the consequences of hiring the wrong person. The candidate, on the other hand, has only an interview to lose! There is nothing else at stake. If you go to an interview today – the worst case scenario is that you are no better (and no worse) than yesterday. The manager should always be more nervous than the candidate.
There is one exception to this rule – interviewing with Human Resources. HR has no “stake in the game”; that is, your performance has no effect on their compensation or reputation with the firm. For this reason you want to avoid them at all costs. We will cover how in future blog posts (spoiler: networking!).
Diagnosing Candidate Nervousness and Solving it
If managers have more to lose, why do candidates get so nervous? Understanding the reasons behind interview nerves can help individuals better manage their stress and present their best selves.
The primary reasons that we’ll address are:
- Fear of Evaluation – Candidates know they are being judged, which can trigger anxiety
- Self-Doubt and Impostor Syndrome – Feeling like a fraud despite evident qualifications can cause significant stress and nervousness
- High Stakes – High personal stakes, such as a dream job or a critical career move, can amplify nervousness
- Preparation and Experience – Feeling underprepared can increase anxiety, and a lack of experience in interviews can make the process more intimidating
We’ve actually studied and written about interview nervousness from a scientific and psychological standpoint – if you’re interested in a far more detailed analysis of it.
Prepare, Prepare, Prepare!
Imagine you are giving a 20-minute presentation for your company. You have notes written out, slides prepared, and you know the material cold.
Now contrast that, to walking into a presentation, without preparation, and not even knowing what the topic is?
Which one would be more frightening?
The best way to be confident during an interview is to know your material cold. That means being able to recite your skills backwards and forwards, memorizing everything on your resume, and anticipating most of the questions that a manager will ask. If you have been laid off, you should treat this as your new job. You want to be so well practiced that when you have an interview, you can almost recite every answer from memory, succinctly, and with confidence.
If you are lying on your resume (something that we encourage, when it serves your interests of establishing a longer work history, for example), you’ll want to prepare to talk about those lies, and make sure your answers are consistent with the rest of your interview. You’ll also want to start thinking about the background check, either by preparing the people providing it to you or by engaging with our services.
Never Allow Yourself to Feel that Jobs Are Scarce
We all suffer from interview scarcity during a hiring downturn. Not doing overemployment (and waiting until you need a job in order to find one) increases the perceived scarcity and necessity when you need it, preventing one from becoming “the chooser” (For those that aren’t in the community, overemployment is when an employee has more than one job at a time – something that we enthusiastically endorse).
The more interviews a candidate gets invited to, the more repetitive the interviewing process becomes, and the less any one interview means to a candidate. Imagine playing a game of baseball. It’s natural for a batter to get nervous before the pitch – he only has three chances to hit a home run! What if the batter had 20 chances to swing, before getting an ‘Out’? 50 swings? How nervous would a batter be then, about any one particular swing?
If you do feel the interview scarcity, and find yourself nervous, you just need more interviews! There are a few ways to do this. First, accept every recruiter call you get. These are good practice, so long as the job is vaguely similar.
Secondly, try applying for jobs far beneath your ability, and interview for them in exactly the same way as the job that you actually want. Also try applying to jobs in other fields (quick apply only though). When I was first starting my career, I was extremely nervous in interviews. This was especially damning for me because my chosen field was sales, and yet I was unable to present myself at all as the confident, outgoing, extroverted candidate that hiring managers expected you to be. Not only was there pressure to interview correctly, but I had to interview in a way that the manager felt I was an assertive and charming individual that would close business for him.
Eventually, I determined that I had to get over this. So I decided to accept every possible interview I could get. Obviously I attended interviews for sales jobs, but I also interviewed for jobs at restaurants, telemarketing firms, even the local Blockbuster down the street (yes this was that long ago!). I had no intention of accepting these positions; I simply wanted to use them as practice.
And guess what happened when I had a real job interview for a sales job that aligned with my career? I aced it, with no nervousness whatsoever, because at that point interviewing was a mindless routine.
If you are concerned about a gap on your resume, we recommend that you do not provide excuses for it.
Never Assume a Job is Perfect for You
Imagine getting an interview with your dream company – you know, the one you always wanted to work for. The hiring manager is excited to meet you, you qualify for the position, and you are sure once meeting with you, the manager will be so enthralled that you will receive an offer shortly after. What do you do until then?
Most people (and even at times, myself included) end their job search. They stop making outbound calls, they don’t prospect for other open positions, and they stop attending networking events. In effect, you are withdrawing yourself from the job market, before you even have an interview. Why waste your time developing new contacts, when you will be offered this dream job shortly?
This never turns out well for the interviewee. In effect, you have just created a scarcity situation for yourself – meaning you enter the interview knowing that this is the only option you have. The candidate enters the interview focusing on the wrong thing – themselves. This nervous energy translates to a candidate not asking the right question, looking the hiring manager in the eyes, not being as energetic and enthusiastic as they truly are for the position. By ending the job search prematurely, the candidate shoots him or herself in the foot, before even walking in the door!
If a good interview is coming up, you owe it to yourself to go to other interviews to prepare for that interview. Stop focusing on that one job – you have no idea how good or bad the position will really be. The more excited you are about an interview, the more you should treat it just like every other.
Additionally, if you are interviewing for a role that is higher than what you did before, never allow yourself to suffer from imposter syndrome – i.e., believing that you’re an outsider that does not belong. As someone who has been an IT executive for a long, long time, I can assure you that most CEOs and VPs feel like imposters in their own roles. The only difference between them and you is that they don’t allow themselves to get nervous about it. Everyone in corporate America are just trying to look out for their own self-interest and push into areas that they don’t really feel like they belong… so stop beating yourself up about it.
If you are feeling like you will be seen as an “imposter” by the recruiter during an interview, one way to mitigate it is to lie on your resume, show an established history of doing the exact job that you are interviewing for, and practice.
For help covering you during the background check, see the article here.