6 Tips to Overcome Interview Fear and Anxiety

You’ve got an important job interview. Now you are very excited and a little nervous. It’s natural to feel anxiety about a job interview. However, too much pre-interview anxiety can somehow affect your performance. Thus you must get over the fear of interview.

Following are some tips about how to shake off your job interview fear and anxiety.

1. Be Prepared.

Get to the interview location up to an hour before your appointment, then get familiar with the environment. Read your resume and recite it. Guess what questions the interviewer will ask and prepare the answers.

2. Memorize Your Resume.

Read and memorize your resume. Knowing all the contents in your resume helps you to keep your head up the entire interview. Your resume contents should be real so that you can memorize easily.

3. Be Confident.

Don’t forget that you are interviewing the company as well. You are not only sitting there and being judged but also judging the interviewers and the company and thinking about whether to become a member of the company or not. You are equal to the interviewers.

4. Positive Self-Talk.

Keep talking to yourself. Say something positive, like “I’ve been prepared. I can do this!”, “Keep calm and be yourself!”, “Relaxed. I can perform well. I can get the job.”, “This job is definitely mine.”, etc. These words can help you be more confident and act more naturally.

5. Smile.

Smiling will at least help to eliminate a fearful look on your face, and smiling will give you power and time to continue. Whenever you are nervous to talk, you can just smile. Make use of the smiling-time to think what to say next and then speak out.

6. Think About the Worst Result.

What’s the worst that will happen? You won’t get the job. It’s no big deal. You can move on to find another, maybe better, job.