Ask HN: Getting over interview anxiety?

People will tell you to practice, which is fine, but the bigger issue is that companies are being stupid by interviewing anyone this way, period.

By all means, practice is good for you. But also try looking for companies that don’t involve unrealistic time pressure combined with trivia-oriented tech questions. Your experience at your current employer proves such jobs exist, and indeed they exist at many types of companies with good job offers.

Just decline the ones that do use algorithm puzzles / whiteboard questions / etc., and include your constraints about how you will be evaluated just as you would include constraints about salary, insurance, job duties, etc.

You’re not interviewing to get out of the rain: it’s about getting what you want in exchange for providing value to the employer.

If part of what you want is to be treated with basic dignity and respect while being evaluated during an interview — something incompatible with trivia / hazing style interviews that are ubiquitous in the tech industry — then just own that choice, be proud of it and straightforward. Just politely tell interviewers it does not work for you, accept that you may need to opt out of a lot of interview pipelines, and you’ll find options better suited to you.

Practice. Basically exposure therapy for interviews. Also look into doing some CBT to change the way you react and think about people judging you.

I wonder if explaining in advance would help. Push as much of the screening into take home tests. Use a github profile to show your work. And the for any real-time screening have the option to split it into two where you can revisit stuff you think you didn’t do so well in because of nerves.

Not sure if this would work but maybe it is worth a try. Some employers might be understanding and help you out. And they’ll be better people to work for anyway.

End of the day if the job doesn’t require pressured presentation of your knowledge then why screen for that.

It is well documented in social psychology that individuals have a hard time with difficult tasks in front of others because their working memory is monitoring the social situation. It is called "social facilitation theory." Technical interviewing is not based on any kind of evidence based HR practices but is entirely instinctual. My pet theory is that the whiteboarding / coderpad epidemic is really a status hierarchy game where individuals make it clear 'if you want to work here, you are going to do what I say.'

This is just my two cents but I think lots of practice with various companies will help you get more confident. Apply to a bunch of jobs you probably wouldn't even want to do. You'll be less stressed about them because you don't care as much about getting them, then slowly ramp up to other companies.

As others have said here, practice. In my career coaching service, I guide clients to practice 10-20x the length of the interview. Have a close friend test you on concepts or talk about the biggest potential areas for red flags on your resume or LinkedIn Profile as employers are looking to minimize risk. Interviewing is acting but playing yourself under stress conditions. So replicate the environment you will be in. Only 5-10 hours will make a world of difference.

To reduce stress, think about it as a conversation between colleagues (of different seniority). You are transferring information not in a court of law defending yourself.

Good luck.

In my case, I found that giving talks at local meetup groups helped very much. It gets you used to talking about code in front of people.

Two things that have helped me a lot are one speaking at toastmasters. It's a public speking community. Just show up as guest to one near you and pick a topic for an impromptu talk and speak in front of few dozen people. It will make interview seem like a piece of cake: https://www.toastmasters.org/

Second, speak more with people in events and stuff. It helps a lot. Talk to strangers, cab drivers, kids, elder, everyone. Good luck!

These interviews are designed to filter less visible people.

None of my friend went through these interviews.

Companies have two kind of employees:

1. Directioner 2. Executioner

If they are hiring for second role, they are put through mind numbing problem solving.

But if it's for the first kind of role, then you don't go through all that. The expectation is that you'll figure out the direction and solution as you go.

One thing is not everyone has to go through these interviews.

Do you've experience? Do you posses a lot of knowledge in a particular niche?

I hire people without these quizes based on their knowledge of the area we gonna work.

What't your tech stack and experience? Where are you based?

This is called choking. It is explained in the course "learning how to learn" [1] which I'm shilling for (unpaid, sadly) because the knowledge is so valuable.

The key here is that you've never performed under pressure, so you have to train yourself to perform under pressure. This way you'll get used to it and you'll be able to function normally or even excel under pressure.

[1] https://www.coursera.org/learn/learning-how-to-learn

Let me just re-iterate practise, practise, practise. After you have done this sufficiently often, following things happen

1-You'll notice how similar interviews are and develop a routine

2-You'll become better aware of what you want and what your strengths are which will help you to sell yourself better

3-I believe each human being has a threshold of "capacity to being bothered". At some point, you will care less about how interviews go. Just imagine you had 5 interviews per week for four weeks. In no way will you be as nervous in your fourth week as you were in your first. You get used to it.

Try to not take any of this personally. It's a game anyone can learn to play.

Interviews are stressful. I recall an interview years ago where I totally blanked on how to write an SQL JOIN. 3 seconds after the interview, it came right back. I can recall the two interviewers exchanging glances that I interpreted as "wow, this guy is a waste of our time." Totally sucked. Very defeating. A different place took me on a few interviews later, and it worked out really well for me (glad I didn't get that other gig!).

A buddy at work wrote this: "I’m Not Great at Technical Interviews. How I Got Hired": https://sendgrid.com/blog/im-great-technical-interviews-got-... (dang, those url slugs are terrible).

His 'briefcase problem' made hiring him a no-brainer; I recall our excitement to just hire him. He may be the best hire I've ever been a part of. Maybe a similar approach could help you.

In an interview, especially as a software developer, you are in a position of power. It may help to remember that.

Companies are desperate to hire enough good developers. You’re evaluating the company as much as they’re evaluating you. If you’re currently employed elsewhere, you can walk away and they’ll still be scrambling to find someone to hire while you’re making your nice comfortable salary.

As a hiring manager, when interviewing a candidate I like, I’m as anxious about selling them on the company and position as they are about proving themselves to me. And a hiring manager who isn’t concerned about impressing you too is one you don’t want to work for anyway because they won’t value you.

If you can keep that in mind and flip the power dynamic in your head, suddenly you’re not on the spot trying to prove yourself to a stranger in a position of authority. Now you’re the one in charge showing your interviewer just how much they’ll be missing out on if they don’t convince you that they’re the one company you should choose out of the thousands that you could work for next.

The following beliefs helped me with my nerves.

Hold the belief that everything will work out and the future is bright.

Focus on doing your best regardless of the outcome. Even if you fail, you can handle it and other good opportunities will come up.

To echo everyone else: practice. Last time I looked for work I immediately went after the job I really wanted, and since I hadn't interviewed anywhere in years it didn't go very well. I then did a bunch of interviews for places I didn't necessarily care about and after a handful I felt much more comfortable with the whole process.

Interviews seem like they should be something you should naturally be good at, but it's a very specific type of situation and it helps a lot to have recent experience in that type of environment. Even just hearing the types of questions other companies are asking for a similar position will be helpful.

Beyond practice, low doses of beta-blocker drugs (e.g. propranolol ~10mg), have been known to be helpful with performance anxiety and are commonly used by actors and musicians. I know at least one person who says it is very helpful for them when interviewing. https://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/04/can-you-treat-st...

One way to change your mindset is to remember that the interviewers WANT to like you.

They're not bringing you in hoping you're an idiot and that they're wasting your time. Everything they know about you is positive and they WANT to hire you.

It's like going on a date. There's something about that person you like and you want to find more things to like!

Like everyone else said, practice, practice, practice. But I also have a little anecdote that may or may not help you. I'll share it, if you don't mind.

Many many moons ago, when I was in middle and high schools, I was terrified of getting up in front of the class to speak. I mean, absolutely petrified. In fact, I was so terrified of the prospect that I would take zeroes on entire assignments because I would have had to present them to the class. It's the main reason why I didn't get a 4.0 in high school and instead got a 3.0: entirely, 100% stage fright.

Then I went to college. Part of the core classes was a Speech class. It was required. We had to do it. I decided that I'd take it as a summer class, so I could get it over with in 3 weeks instead of stretching it out across an entire semester.

I got to the class, sat way in the back, and shook and sweated and just generally felt awful. The teacher gave us the first assignment. "Bring a book and read a passage out loud to the class."

OK. I can do that! I brought The Hobbit, one of my favorite books of all time, and I read the first chapter out loud. I could focus on the pages and not the people, and I just pretended I was reading out loud in my room. It went... okay. I was still nervous as shit, but I wound up doing it and I got an A, mostly because, I mean, how hard is it to read out loud?

The second assignment was to describe a quality in ourselves to the class. Serendipity struck, and I decided to tell the class about how terrified I was of speaking in front of people.

"Um, um... -cough- uh, hi. Um, my name is, uh, Jemaclus, and I uh... I mean, my quality is that I'm, uh, totally terrified of, um, speaking in front of people, because, um, everyone is staring at me likeyouareallstaringatmenow um, and uh.. it makes me, uh... nervous, and I say uh and um a lot, and I shake, and i, um..."

I basically spent my 5 minutes in front of the class describing anything and everything I was doing and feeling and I even acknowledged that we weren't supposed to be doing any of these things because the teacher had explicitly said "don't say um" before! But I was legitimately having some sort of anxiety attack or something. I just kept talking, and eventually, the timer went off and I shakily made my way back to my desk and hyperventilated until I calmed down.

At the end of the class, the teacher handed out her scores, and to my very, very great surprise, I got an A+. On the side, she had written a note: "Great acting!"

Whiskey. Tango. Foxtrot.

I hadn't been acting! I was legitimately about to shit myself!

And that's when I had an epiphany, which is sort of the lesson of this anecdote. The epiphany was this: people project their desires onto you. My teacher wanted to believe that nobody could possibly be that bad, so she chose to believe that I was acting. She didn't want me to fail. Nobody in the class wants anyone to get up and make a fool of themselves. They want to see someone do something successfully. In most scenarios, they don't expect perfect oration or flawless performance, just enough to enjoy it! (Alternately, she just felt bad for me... but I like my version better.)

A second mini-epiphany came after class. I was talking about it with my classmates, and they all admitted they had been so terrified of their own upcoming performances that they barely noticed mine. Instead of listening to me, they were mentally rehearsing their own speeches. In other words: not only did nobody want me to fail, most people weren't even paying attention!

For the next speech, we had to teach the class how to do something. I decided to demonstrate how to juggle. It was physical, so it was something that would keep my mind off the people watching me. It worked... And not only did it work, but it let me sort of realize that literally nobody was paying much attention except for the teacher, and _she_ wanted me to do a good job. And I...