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How to control nerves by a job interview: 5 tips

How to control nerves by a job interview: 5 tips

February 28, 2024

Job interviews are often stressful situations by their very nature. In most cases, as candidates for a position, we do not go to them simply to test the terrain and get information from a company that is interesting to us, but even before it starts we already think about possible alternative futures that we wait in case of being accepted. In other words, they are contexts that we perceive as if each of them could radically change the course of our lives.

However… How to control nerves in a job interview? While we can not completely control our degrees of anxiety and stress, indirectly it is possible to influence them to make them go down.


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Nerves in a job interview: what to do and how to control them

The expectations that we create before the job interviews cause our nervous system to be on alert when the time comes to enter the office in which the selectors will value us. Unconsciously, we try to be aware of everything that happens around us to maximize our chances of success.

It is clear that a certain level of nervousness is positive, because it leads us to think of something that is important to us and, in that way, makes it more possible for us not to leave anything in the pipeline when planning how we approach that issue. However, if the level of stress and anxiety is very high, it is also more possible that we get stuck trying to respond to many things at once. OR that, in general, we give the image of not being prepared to face a challenge .


The latter is especially relevant in the case of job interviews, since in them the superficial and more "automatic" assessment of people counts as a mechanism for discarding candidates. The idea that if we are too weak and imperfect when interviewed by the Human Resources recruiters makes us feel more nervous, so that we feel the perfect breeding ground for the self-fulfilling prophecy to appear. The fact that we think we can be too anxious makes anxiety levels rise.

For that reason, fighting nerves in a job interview is a challenge, since not only do we have the need to present our candidacy in the most desirable way possible, but we must also try not to involve our emotions too much ... which is something more difficult if we do not have many job offers to choose from. That said, and considering that each case is unique, let's see what they are the strategies we can adopt to cushion the effects of stress .


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1. Sleep well

Although it may seem counterintuitive, not getting enough sleep makes us more likely to feel nervous and restless situations in which we notice that we do not have control . Yes, for most of the day we are sleepy and everything in us seems to work more slowly, but when situations appear that demand a lot from us, we feel less prepared to face them. As a result, our entire nervous system invests more energy in maintaining general alert, although that leads us to be more imprecise in each of the specific tasks to perform.


So, something as simple as sleeping well and regularly is a way to reduce the chances of being too nervous in a job interview.

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2. Do not fantase

There are many people who tend to fantasize a lot imagining the best of possible futures from a key milestone that, in the case at hand, may be the job interview itself. This is stimulating, but it also makes us prone to obsess about a selection process that does not have to be so decisive, nor does he need us to pay so much attention and care to go through it satisfactorily .


In this case, the fear of frustration is what leads us to do everything possible to make the ideal life that we have imagined become a reality. To prevent this type of problem, everything happens to try to be realistic and to combine the illusion for a potential new work with the fact of taking into account the more than probable imperfections of the position that we aspire to cover.

3. Prepare for the interview

Obviously, the better prepared we have the interview, the more likely it is that we will feel prepared ourselves to go through this stage of the selection leaving a good taste in the mouth to the interviewers.

So, the ideal is to make a list of objective needs that must be covered to go in conditions to the interview, ordering them by priority and importance , and go fulfilling them before the day arrives. For example: buy a suitable wardrobe if we do not already have it, have thought about what we will say when they ask us why we are interested in the position, know the way to get to the offices where the interviews are conducted, investigate a little about the company that have vacancies, etc.


4. Get out in time

To leave with a lot of time of margin towards the interview of work is very advisable to control the nerves, since let's not get tired or get tired and, with that, that we go through the unpleasant experience of arriving at the office, pretending to be exhausted and disheveled. In addition, this will allow us to carry out the following advice.

5. Do relaxation exercises

If it can be, do relaxation exercises in the waiting room. They should be very simple and basic, focused on breathing and muscle relaxation , since obviously you can not do things like stretch on the floor or adopt strange postures. In this way, just before presenting yourself to the HR staff, your stress levels will be lower.


Job Interview Tips - How To Deal With Interview Nerves (February 2024).


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