Recently we had a great guest post from Mary Hope on The Benefits Of Good Career Management. Mary has over 30 years of experience in business, teaching, HR, headhunting and coaching. She believes passionately that people need to understand their own drivers and needs to find fulfilling careers. Today she shares with us her thoughts on how confidence destroys performance at interview and provides a solution.
What is the formula for confidence in interviews, meetings or those big occasions?
You can find lots of help and information about how to build your confidence for an interview. Usually these talk about preparation, rehearsing and looking the part. I give all that advice. But what if that is not enough. What if you know you have done all those things but you still feel a complete bag of nerves? What if you know that you will turn up at the interview shaking? If you know that you will get tongue-tied and worry that you might just dry up? What if you are really anxious that you won’t be able to think of anything to say? OR are you one of those people who just feels ‘I’m no good at interviews’? Who feels that, interviewers will ‘catch you out’ ‘spot that you are not really that good’, put you on the spot. MAYBE you are someone who hates talking about themselves and just feels shy and exposed.
Even if you have confidence in your own abilities to do a job it may not be enough to get you to feel confident in an interview.
And lack of confidence is a major issue in interviews because it clouds the way the interviewers see you. Interviewers find it really hard to believe that you can do a job confidently if they see you shaking in an interview.
And feeling nervous about the interview will impact on you ability to answer the questions. Nervousness is like static on the line, your brain starts to pay attention to the static and the crackling and stops paying attention to formulating the answers. You tense up and your mouth dries up and you become so self-conscious you dry up. Literally your nerves stop you being able to perform.
If you have had bad experiences in the past they flood back to you and you re-experience failure. Sometimes the bad experiences and fear of failure means that you can’t even do the preparation required.
So how can you overcome this? Well you need to do all the really practical things suggested above and then you need to visualise yourself doing well in the interview. If you are nervous, that can be hard so with my clients I use a relaxation a creative visualisation technique. We literally run through all the things that you need to do perform well and then as I relax them and talk them through an imaginary interview where everything goes really well and they feel really confident. And it works. Clients report a sense of feeling more relaxed and going into their interviews feeling more confident. So imagine your way to success! These techniques work just as well at any nerve-wracking encounter.. big meeting, presentation whatever.
In order to help more people use this very effective technique I have recorded on a CD, a session which you can purchase from my website . You can listen your way to confidence I have called it The Turbo Charge Interview Confidence Booster and you can find it by clicking here.
Mary Hope supports people to manage their careers more effectively and get paid more, promoted faster and feel more satisfied. She has over 30 years of experience in business, teaching, HR, headhunting and coaching. She believes passionately that people need to understand their own drivers and needs to find fulfilling careers.
