When we feel nervous, we experience flight, fight or freeze response. That is we tend to pace everything up, to get the hell out of there, go on the offensive as a pre emptive strike or startle like a rabbit caught in the headlights. (especially if we haven’t prepared well-enough).
Flight response visually may result in rushed movement, quick and nervous eye contact, and fidgeting. So to avoid this it may be helpful to warm up physically before your interview so your muscles respond better to brain messages, avoid too much coffee beforehand, and remember that you easing the interviewer in to experiencing you – rather than approaching them like a nucleur missile.
Often just slowing down pace of entry into the room can help soothe flight response, as can reminding yourself that you want to clock the expression on each interviewer’s face as you listen and talk to them. You want to make enough eye contact to be fully attentive.
If you tend to rush through interviews, rehearse live with a friend or relative and get them to wave at you every time they feel they haven’t got enough eye contact. Tell them you want them to feel reassured by you – and ask them ‘What can I do more or less of?’ to create this effect.
People often ask about the ‘correct’ use of body language. There are certain gestures, hands about face, wagging and pointing finger that almost always have negative connotations and are best avoided. Some sales training companies teach their staff to imitate the potential customer’s body language exactly to create rapport. This can go badly wrong if nerves render you slightly inept and you end up looking like you are mocking the interviewer. But it is sensible to tune in to the body language of your interviewers and adapt to it, if needed. Key questions will involve:
- how expansive or contained do they seem? Are they taking up plenty of space or occupying constrained space?
- how open or defensive do they seem? Relaxed and open body language and a relaxed interviewing style will indicate the culture of the enterprise. If the interview is formal, the culture is likely to be more bureaucratic.
- how involved or detached do they seem? Some interviewers will love playing the role of judge and emphasize this through angling back away from you, tilting their head back and no showing any obvious reaction. It’s unwise to imitate this detachment, as you need to be involved and enthusiastic about your – and their – prospects.
Some of us when we are nervous become ‘goody-goody’ versions of ourselves. In which case we will instinctively start to use orderly, symmetrical body language. Bear in mind that informality conveys itself through asymmetry and that sometimes through crossing a leg over the other, or having one arm a lap and one on a table , we may seem more relaxed.
When you enter the room, and are uncertain about whether to shake hands, you can always ask ’shall we shake hands?’ or proffer a handshake anyway. Unless of course there are cultural mores that forbid this and make it not the right greeting to make.
Practice a sitting position a) in which you feel comfortable and b) in which you send out good signals. Why practice? It’s one less thing to think about when you’re in the interview.
Practice a good smile. Some of us get very earnest when we are being interviewed. Relax your face muscles by chewing and stretching and get used to producing a warm smile when required. It will give you instant plus points,anywhere.
Twitchy and fidgety? A small smooth pebble in one hand in your lap which you squeeze may effectively channel tension for you, and not distract interviewers. If you’ve taken some physical exercise before the interview, this twitchiness will be easier to control, as warmed up muscles respond better to messages from the brain, than cold ones.
Where you tend to be laid back and inexpressive visually, make a mental note to compensate elsewhere. Be sure you have content prepared which includes what gives you and your clients/customers a buzz and that you are able to talk with animated enthusiasm about this. Sometimes ‘laid back’ – especially in these times of the ‘engaged’ worker being most valued – can read as insufficiently motivated.
Clothing and Appearance
When most people wore suits to work, regardless of what they did, decisions about this were much easier. But with ‘smart-casual’ or ‘casual-casual’ prevailing it can be more difficult.Best approach? Field work. Hang around outside the employer or somewhere similar and then turn up as a slightly smarter version of what you’ve seen. And look at any online video and image content of the enterprise.Line this intelligence up along with the role you are going for. I’d warn against using novelty ties and socks as a substitute for personality. But how fashionable or conservative you choose to dress will also depend on your sector. It is up to you.
In Wales we have a popular saying ‘You take us as you find us’ which we say to visitors, usually after spending the morning cleaning non-stop for their arrival. You are quite free to decide the same about your tattoos and piercings if you think they manifest that creative input you could bring to an investment bank.
However much you may want the job, an interview is still a two-way appraisal, remember : you of them and them of you.
How You Sound
Back to Intee’s point of view, we can imagine you will have some standards for how your interviewees sound.
Take a moment to think about this. What is it about someone’s speech that really makes you listen to them?
We might expect you would like:
- to be able to understand them clearly
- to feel they sound fairly confident
- to find their voice sufficiently interesting
- to follow their train of thought
- to note mentally or actually the key points they make
Once again, reactions we make about how others speak are highly subjective. Some of us love Irish or Southern American accents, low voices, languid delivery while others will have a whole different sort of preferences.But we all need to be heard clearly, so here are some pointers for getting best support from your voice for your interview performance.
Your Answers
Have a rehearse around the gist of what you are going to say, massively over-exaggerating your muscle movement, beforehand. Some of us when we get nervous find our face muscles mask to hide our anxiety creating a literal stiff upper lip and a frozen expression. Clear articulation shapes the consonants well, which are the clarity and logic carrying sounds. Not a lot of people make this connection, but slurred or fuzzy consonants may raise doubts for Intee, without them knowing why.
Most Intees will tell you the most common mistake they encounter in delivery, is nervous candidates rushing in to answer their questions. Then a phrase later, you can often clock an expression on their face which reads: ‘Oh my goodness what was the question I was just answering?’. We have to breathe in before we speak – literally taking in inspiration – to give our voices power. But fight and flight response can cause us to snatch in breath for the distant possibility that we may flee the interview room or fight the interviewer. If you can hear your breath hitting the back of the throat, or feel you are heaving up the top part of your chest to breathe in, then you may be using this slightly panicky pattern. So rehearse answers, again with a friend, or family member (or if that’s difficult talk to yourself, or the cat) and be sure you let your breath drop in, to the bottom part of your lungs before you answer.
Once you’ve settled into a controlled rhythmn for your questions and answers, check how the shape of your answers works. Long rambling sentences will be difficult for Intees to follow, so you want to keep your phrases fairly short and like sound bites. Picture yourself putting in plenty of full stops as you speak. Whether they would be there or not if you were writing your answers down. In the way that I’m writing here.
Finally, make sure that you sound loud enough to appear confident, quite happy taking up enough auditory space. Projection works through having your breath under control and plenty of movement in your speech organs in the front of your face. If you sense you have an over-controlled, boring delivery, then trying varying the volume, going louder and quieter. This is usually quite sufficient to create interest, and better than trying out changing pitch, or note, which can result in an overly vivid sound, like a anxious children’s tv presenter, which will make you sound more fake than friend.