How to Be Confident in an Interview and Manage Interview Nerves
Updated: Sep 10
Job interviews can make even very capable people nervous.
You may feel perfectly confident doing your job, yet the moment you have to sit in front of somebody and explain why you're good at it, everything seems to change.
Your heart races. Your mouth becomes dry. You start worrying that your mind will go blank or that you'll stumble over your answers. Perhaps you rehearse conversations in your head for days beforehand and imagine all the things that could go wrong.
Interview nerves are extremely common. They can involve physical symptoms such as a pounding heart, sweating, shaking, rapid breathing and nausea, as well as racing thoughts and difficulty relaxing.
As a clinical hypnotherapist and psychotherapist with more than 25 years' experience, I've worked with many people whose confidence seems to disappear when they feel they are being evaluated.
The good news is that you don't need to eliminate every trace of nervousness to give a good interview.
You need to learn how to stop those nerves from taking over.
If interview nerves are making it difficult to show what you're capable of, I've created an Interview Confidence Hypnosis MP3 to help you feel calmer, think more clearly and approach interviews with greater confidence.
Why Do Job Interviews Make Us So Nervous?
An interview is an unusual situation.
You're being observed, questioned and evaluated by people who may decide whether you get something you really want.
Your brain therefore recognises that the outcome matters.
The physical sensations you experience — faster heartbeat, butterflies, sweating and increased alertness — are part of your body's response to a situation it considers important.
The problem isn't necessarily the initial nervousness.
It's what happens next.
You notice your heart beating faster and think:
"I'm getting really nervous."
That thought creates more anxiety.
Then you notice the anxiety increasing:
"I'm going to mess this up."
Before long, you're frightened not only of the interview but of your own nervousness.
Research into interview anxiety suggests that it can involve interacting cognitive, behavioural and physiological elements. In other words, what you're thinking, what your body is doing and how you subsequently behave can all feed into the experience.
Understanding that can make interview nerves feel much less mysterious.
Stop Trying to Get Rid of Every Nerve
One of the first things I would change is the belief that you need to feel completely calm.
You don't.
Some nervous energy is perfectly normal when something matters.
Instead of thinking:
"I mustn't be nervous."
try:
"It's okay to feel a little nervous. My body knows this is important."
There is evidence that changing how we interpret anxious arousal can be more useful than simply trying to suppress it. Research involving simulated job interviews has also found reappraisal and acceptance more effective at reducing anxiety than suppression.
That is an important distinction.
You don't have to fight your nerves.
You can allow them to be there without letting them run the interview.
Prepare Enough — But Don't Prepare for Every Possible Question
Preparation is one of the best ways to reduce unnecessary uncertainty.
Research the organisation. Read the job description again. Think about the skills and experience they're looking for and identify examples from your own experience that demonstrate them.
UK interview guidance consistently recommends preparing around the role, organisation and likely questions.
But there is a difference between preparing and trying to control every possible outcome.
If you attempt to memorise perfect answers to dozens of possible questions, you can actually give yourself something else to worry about:
"What if they ask something I haven't prepared?"
Instead, know your experience.
Have several good examples in mind that demonstrate things such as solving a problem, dealing with pressure, working with others, learning from a mistake or achieving something you're proud of.
Then you have material you can adapt rather than a script you have to remember.
Rehearse Without Memorising
Practising answers aloud can be extremely useful.
Speaking is different from thinking.
An answer that sounds wonderful inside your head may feel awkward when you actually say it.
Try answering likely questions aloud in your own words.
Don't worry about saying exactly the same thing each time.
You're practising the idea, not memorising the sentence.
This helps your answers remain conversational and makes it less frightening if the interviewer phrases a question differently from the way you expected.
Challenge the Thoughts That Make Interview Nerves Worse
Interview anxiety often contains an enormous amount of prediction.
"I'll forget everything."
"The other candidates will be better than me."
"They'll realise I'm not good enough."
"If I get one question wrong, I've blown it."
Notice that these aren't facts.
They're predictions.
Ask yourself what you actually know.
You know you've been invited to interview.
That means somebody has already looked at your application and decided you're worth meeting.
You know that interviewers expect candidates to be nervous.
And you know that a thoughtful pause or imperfect answer doesn't automatically ruin an interview.
Try replacing catastrophic predictions with something more realistic:
"I don't know exactly what they'll ask, but I can deal with one question at a time."
That's very different from pretending everything will definitely go perfectly.
Remember That You Are Interviewing Them Too
An interview can start to feel like an examination in which all the power belongs to the people sitting opposite you.
Try changing that perspective.
The organisation has something you may want: a job.
But you also have something it may want: your skills, experience and potential.
You're both trying to discover whether the match is right.
This doesn't mean becoming overconfident.
It simply means replacing:
"Please decide I'm good enough."
with something closer to:
"Let's find out whether we're right for each other."
That small change can remove a surprising amount of pressure.
How to Calm Yourself Before the Interview
On the day itself, keep things simple.
Give yourself enough time so that you're not adding the stress of rushing or arriving late.
Try not to spend the final hour cramming more information into your head.
Instead, concentrate on getting yourself into a calmer physical state.
Gentle, regular breathing can be useful for stress and anxiety. Current NHS guidance recommends allowing the breath to move comfortably into the belly and breathing gently and regularly rather than forcing it.
You might also deliberately bring your attention away from all the imagined possibilities and back to what is happening around you now.
Notice where you are.
Feel your feet on the floor.
Let your shoulders relax.
You don't need to solve the entire interview while you're sitting in reception.
You only need to walk into the room.
What to Do If Your Mind Goes Blank
This is one of the biggest fears people have about interviews.
The interviewer asks a question and suddenly there seems to be absolutely nothing inside your head.
First, don't panic about the pause.
You don't have to answer immediately.
Take a breath.
You can say:
"That's a good question. Let me think about that for a moment."
Interview guidance specifically encourages candidates to take time to consider their answers and not be afraid of natural pauses.
If you don't understand the question, ask the interviewer to repeat or rephrase it.
That doesn't make you look incompetent.
It shows that you want to answer the question you've actually been asked.
Slow Yourself Down
Anxiety often speeds everything up.
Your thoughts race, your breathing becomes quicker and your speech follows.
If you know you tend to rush when you're nervous, deliberately aim to speak a little more slowly than feels natural.
Pause at the end of a sentence.
Take a breath before beginning the next thought.
You may feel as though the pauses are enormous.
They probably aren't.
To the interviewer, you are much more likely to appear thoughtful and composed.
Move Your Attention Away From Yourself
Interview anxiety can make you intensely self-conscious.
What are my hands doing?
Did my voice just shake?
Do I look nervous?
Was that a stupid answer?
The more closely you monitor yourself, the harder it becomes to concentrate on the actual conversation.
Research has examined self-focused attention and negative self-thought as important elements of interview anxiety, with interventions aimed at shifting these patterns reducing anxiety and improving interview self-efficacy.
So listen to the interviewer.
Become interested in the question.
Look at the person speaking to you.
Think about the experience they're asking you to describe.
Your job isn't to monitor your performance from the outside.
It's to participate in the conversation.
Don't Let One Difficult Answer Ruin the Rest of the Interview
Suppose you give an answer you don't particularly like.
What happens next?
For many nervous candidates, the interview continues physically while mentally they're still stuck on the previous question.
"That was terrible."
"Why did I say that?"
"I've ruined it now."
And because they're thinking about the last answer, they don't properly hear the next question.
Let the previous answer go.
Interviewers assess the interview as a whole. You don't know how they interpreted the answer, and you certainly can't improve it by replaying it while they're asking you something else.
Return to the question in front of you.
What About Video Interviews?
Many of the same principles apply.
Test your camera, microphone and internet connection beforehand.
Choose somewhere you are unlikely to be interrupted.
Have anything you genuinely need nearby, but don't surround yourself with pages of notes that you then feel compelled to read.
Look towards the camera regularly rather than constantly watching your own image.
Seeing yourself on screen can make self-consciousness worse, particularly if you're already monitoring every expression.
Your aim is still the same:
Have a conversation rather than perform a perfect interview.
Can Self-Hypnosis Help With Interview Nerves?
Interview nerves often begin well before the interview itself.
You may repeatedly imagine difficult questions, picture yourself struggling or mentally rehearse failure.
Over time, merely thinking about an interview can begin to trigger the same anxious response.
This is where self-hypnosis may be useful as part of your preparation.
I use hypnosis to help people work with the automatic thoughts, expectations and emotional responses that can undermine confidence.
The aim isn't to make you believe that you're guaranteed to get the job.
Nor is hypnosis a substitute for researching the company or preparing properly.
Instead, it can help you mentally rehearse approaching the interview more calmly: walking into the room, listening carefully, thinking before answering, speaking steadily and recovering easily if something doesn't go exactly as planned.
I've created an Interview Confidence Self-Hypnosis recording specifically for people who know they are capable but find that nerves prevent them from showing it in interviews.
The Interview Doesn't Require a Perfect Version of You
It's easy to imagine that the successful candidate will be the person who walks through the door completely relaxed, answers every question perfectly and never hesitates.
Real interviews aren't like that.
People pause.
People feel nervous.
People sometimes need a question repeated.
People remember a better answer five minutes after they've given one.
None of that automatically means they've performed badly.
Your aim isn't perfection.
It's to give the interviewer a fair opportunity to see the person behind the nerves — your experience, your abilities and what you could bring to the role.
Prepare properly.
Allow yourself to feel some nervousness.
Listen to the question in front of you.
And remember: you don't have to feel completely confident before you can behave confidently.
