Actionable Steps to Prepare You for Your Next Job Interview
“How determined you are determines how successful you are”
- Jen Sincero
Did you know that anxious job candidates receive lower ratings of interview performance?
Dozens of studies, including my own, have shown that anxious candidates fare worse in the job interview process (Powell, Stanley & Brown, 2018). There are many reasons why job candidates tend to receive lower performance scores (spoiler alert: more to come on that in future blog posts). But for now we will focus on one factor that seems to improve your rating of interview performance when you’re nervous: PREPARATION. I’m sure that’s not a huge surprise for you. But the question is, then, why doesn’t everyone do it? And what kind of practice is effective?
Olympic Athletes spend 90% of their time in practice. There is a reason for that.
Practising is beneficial for arguably any high-stakes situation. That’s why Olympic athletes spend 90% of their time in training and practice! They actually try to expose themselves to various choke points so they can get experience with dealing with precarious conditions. For example, football players need to get practice in playing on a wet field and tennis players need to get practice dealing with an opponent who touches on their weak points. I think we sometimes forget that the same level of training and mastery is required for other high-stakes situations in our lives.
Create opportunities for you to practice for your next job interview
In a job interview context, practising your answers not only allows you to become more succinct, it helps you manage your nerves in the moment. For example, if you know that you get more anxious in a panel interview situation, enlist some family and friends to serve as your panel interviewers. There are many other ways to practice such as brainstorming a list of questions, writing your responses, practicing your responses out loud and you could even videotape your answers (I always recommend this). The key is that you need to create mock “interview” opportunities so you can get practice with managing your nerves and increase your confidence prior to the interview.
Did you know that there are gender differences when it comes to preparation?
What’s also interesting is that there seems to be gender differences in the type of practice and preparation job candidates engage in heading into a job interview. Females tend to engage in more practice and also make an effort to cope with their emotions more than men do (Feeney, McCarthy & Goffin, 2015; Feiler & Powell, 2013). For example, females are more likely to practice interview questions (task coping) and to talk to someone about their interview nerves (emotion coping). Men tend to engage in more avoidance coping strategies…exactly what it sounds like, avoiding dealing with their angst and preparation activities altogether. The piece that is ironic is that females tend to have higher levels of interview anxiety but actually outperform anxious males. The morale of the story is that practice seems to help job candidates who are anxious in an employment interview. Regardless of your gender, I hope I’ve made my case here for how much preparation really pays off!
Give this a try:
Practising for your next job interview
Create a list of interview questions. You can do a quick Google search of interview questions that are tied to specific competencies in the job posting or come up with a list on your own. It is important to have a mix of questions - behavioural, situational and problem-solving questions. You can keep it fun too by writing the questions on flash cards so it mixes up the ordering of the questions themselves, too.
Practice with someone who will give you encouraging, constructive feedback. It is important that you practice with someone who makes you feel comfortable but that s/he is also not afraid to give you constructive feedback. Related to this, see the next bullet.
Be specific about what kind of feedback you want. Ask your “interviewer” for specific feedback and to take notes. What questions were you less succinct? Which questions are your best? What are your non-verbal cues? Are you saying the word “like” 100 times in 3 minutes as I used to? What kind of impression are you conveying? Could the “interviewer” tell that you were nervous?
Videotape yourself and make some observations. You will (likely) see that you do not appear as nervous as what you feel. In the academic literature, this phenomenon is referred to as “the illusion of transparency” - you think your anxiety is more transparent than what it actually is. When you re-play back your video, take note of what non-verbal cues you are exhibiting and what impression you might be conveying. Are you fidgeting with your pen the whole time? Staring at the wall? Do you look disinterested? What are your words and behaviours saying about you?
Resources
This article by Inc.com titled “Your nerves are showing: 3 dead giveaways that you’re nervous” featured some of my graduate research findings related to how anxious interviewees are perceived. What was particularly fascinating is that our results showed that the nervous tics that anxious job candidates engaged in were less important than the broader impressions that they conveyed (i.e., being viewed as assertive).
Recap
The bottom line here is that preparation is important when it comes to managing your interview anxiety and it shouldn’t be underestimated. Research studies find that the results pay off for anxious job candidates who practice for an impending job interview. It’s important to spend time creating opportunities to prepare yourself on an emotional level and to practice various types of interview questions and situations. I’d love to hear about other tips that you have for preparing for job interviews. What do you do to practice? At the end of the day, my best piece of advice is to strive to be yourself and remember that you’re interviewing the interviewer as much as they are interviewing you.
References
Feeney, J. R., McCarthy, J. M., & Goffin, R. (2015). Applicant anxiety: Examining the sex‐linked anxiety coping theory in job interview contexts. International Journal of Selection and Assessment, 23(3), 295-305.
Feiler, A. R., & Powell, D. M. (2013a). Interview anxiety across the sexes: Support for the sex-linked anxiety coping theory. Personality and Individual Differences, 54, 12-17.
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