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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Andrei Radu" data-source="post: 222249" data-attributes="member: 36777">Two things helped me a lot when trying to calm nerves before (and during)my interviews:Firstly, instead of going in with a mindset that you need to showcase exceptional brilliance to succeed instead of other strong candidates, go in with the mindset that all you need to get through is to simply score well in all the assessment criteria. I think a lot of candidates put unnecessary pressure on themselves to prove some incredible ability or skill in one are or another, as they imagine this kind of thing is the only aspect that can pull them apart from an already incredibly skilled crowd. Nonetheless, what I observed in practice is that the people focusing on "knocking the ball out of the park" tended to stress themselves out too much and would end up tripping themselves up. Thus, they would not score well at all in one or more assessment criteria, and would be rejected for this reason. If you instead have an attitude that you should avoid making big mistakes and should simply focus on answering each question well and being an all-around good candidate, you will not as constantly be mentally criticising yourself for not having done better, which will allow you to relax more and focus on the next question. Secondly, I would advise you to slow down when speaking and to use silence strategically: when in an interview, your nerves naturally cause your heartbeat to increase and thus you are put in a bit of a "fight or flight" mindset, which can make you react quickly (and hastily) to questions. This can:<ol> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Make you speak really fast, which reduces the clarity of your speech (as it simply requires more processing power and concentration from the other side to make out what you are saying) and makes you appear less articulate (when speaking quickly, you will more often find yourself stumbling mid sentence for loss of words and have to reformulate because you have not had enough time to find the right initial formulation). </li> <li data-xf-list-type="ol">Make you not consider the substance of your answer enough: In rushing to answer a question immediately, people often end up basing their discussion on the first thought that comes to mind, which can often not be the best one. Then, having started this way, it is difficult to retract and reformulate even if they realise they went wrong 20-30 seconds in. </li> </ol>To avoid these issues, my advice is to (i) consciously bring down the pace of your speech, (ii) take 2-3 second strategic breaks during your answer (particularly when in-between points) to consider how to structure and formulate the next part of your answer; and (iii) generally, take at least 5-10 seconds before you start answering a new question to make up a "mental plan" as to what you will say. If you take these steps, it should improve both the substance of your points and the form they are expressed in, and, more importantly, it will likely have a positive loop effect (if you slow down and take breaks, you will both appear more composed, but also cause yourself to actually become more composed and experience less "flight or fight" emotions, effects that will reinforce one another).</blockquote>

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