Ask HN: How to defeat interview anxiety?
HNers, I have attended 2 interviews so far in the past 4 years & I have failed to get the job on both the interviews. I just get very anxious during in person interviews & I am not able to think straight at all. I could only give out answers to questions for which I knew the answers before hand. I am not good at deducing answers logically during interviews. For instance on my last interview, I was given a problem & I fumbled a lot & gave convoluted answers but when the interviewers left, I was able to think straight & arrived at a very simple solution to the problem. My success rate is 0% so far & I am worried that it is going to take some time before I could get a job. As of now, my strategy has been to prepare as well as possible before hand for the interview and for some reason this strategy does not seem to work. Any suggestions? Thanks.
13 comments
[ 2.6 ms ] story [ 45.2 ms ] threadOr... Try do not think about how it will go and do not do any preparation for it. You afraid about something COULD happen. So just do not think about what COULD happen. If it will ever happen, then be afraid =)
2. Xanax, or some other anti-anxiety med.
The fact is nobody really knows how they work, and they all have rafts of side effects which their makers are loathe to discuss with you in an upfront and intellectually honest manner. (How do I know this? I worked for one of the larger makers of such drugs).
In any case it's unlikely that you'll be able to predict how they'll affect you on the day of the interview (if they have any affect above placebo at all), and might even make you have greater feelings of anxiety and low self-esteem (as in "I'm so messed up I need pillz just to hack these job interviews).
There are a lot of techniques (meditation, cognitive therapy, etc.) that can help with anxiety, but which one is most appropriate is going to depend on the details of your situation.
2) Have five good lines polished and ready to go prior to going into an interview. Attempt to steer the conversation such that you get to use at least three of them. For example, I always made it a point to research the company I was applying for, get one factoid into the interview, and say "I made it my business to know your business." (That line gets better reactions than almost any I've ever delivered.)
Secondly, try and apply for jobs (if you have this choice) to places that don't do "monkey trick" interviews but screen using other techniques, like code submissions. (This is one of the many reasons I prefer the latter to the former)
The point about power dynamics in the link below might also be helpful:
http://askamanager.blogspot.com/2010/05/how-can-i-stop-being...
[Later edit: Since you said elsewhere that this is a problem only during interviews, make sure your reference letters mention you are a good communicator or problem solver or whatever, to indicate that anything the interviewers see is not typical]
In fact you might want to start practicing the complete opposite of this mindset -- just walk in there as if it's you who is contemplating whether to hire them (which in essence is true anyway -- as all truly desirable working situations are two-way streets), and has plenty of other options available if this particular situation doesn't work out. (Paul Graham has a few good paragraphs about this).
Another key conceptual point to keep in mind the fact that while many of these tests are presented as being nominally objective, when in fact their bigger purpose is really psychological -- the interviewer really is just trying to see whether they can "vibe" with you in this interaction as much as whether you are coming up with the right answers. So another thing you want to try priming yourself with (rather than meds) is an an air of simple humility, rather than defensiveness, or again, a need to be seen as always "right" or "worthy" of their assessments.
Some more mundane tips: concentrate on listening(!), maintaining eye contact, and (very important) speaking slowly (because one of the outward signs of anxiety is the tendency to bulldoze past others). Ditto for written Q&A tests, and especially for coding tasks at the whiteboard -- even if you don't normally do so in your own personal habits, find a way to force yourself to write neatly (evenly spaced, properly alignment horizontal / vertical). And when you think it's done, check it again for failure modes and possible optimizations (before the interviewer has a chance to give you that annoying "that's nice. but aren't you missing something?" line).
Basically, it's better to answer fewer questions in more thorough detail than to get through every question the interviewer may have had on his list to ask you. And it's much more important to be neat, cogent and presentable than to be superfast when writing code. And which again, all gets down to basic psychology -- showing the interviewer that you are capable of seeing things from their perspective -- which in essence is what these "tests" are really about, anyway.
Also: as others have said, do develop your portfolio and code samples -- which by all rights ought to speak volumes more than those stupid puzzle sessions).
But as to those puzzles: accept that they are represent a deeply flawed and simple-minded (when you think about it, almost zombie-like) approach to the task of assessing human potential -- but due to a lack of imagination, or simply a follow-the-herd mentality, your interviewers just don't have any better tools to whip out for the occasion -- so you'll just have to "embrace the suck" and find a way to social-engineer your way through them.
By now most of those famous, occasionally interesting (but sometimes also incredibly asinine) puzzle questions have been "leaked" to various places -- dig up as many of those as you can, and spend a few afternoons convincing yourself of your ability to answer each and every one of them. (In particular: techinterview.org, wu riddles, steve yegge's questions, etc).
Even if you miss a few, you can at least be confident that your probability of failure is acceptably low -- and (for the logic puzzles) most of those you do miss probably have some "aha!" flavor to them that doesn't have any functional relation to real-world problem solving anyway. Or you've simply gotten rusty (like many of these interviewers do themselves, particularly in areas that weren't their major focus in school).
Finally, "chill." Don't spend the morning before the interview cramming. Better to lounge around a bit, make sure you've eaten well (but not just before the interview), scoped out the route to get there, etc.
And when it does come to rejection (which is inevitable): ...