How to be confident at interviews?

How to be confident at interviews?

Being confident at interviews has two elements associated with it:

i.) Good preparation i.e. having good content to answer various questions.
ii.) Being effective in your delivery.



In my past videos, I have talked quite in detail about how to prepare your answers for various questions.So, I’m not going to talk anything about the content part here. What I’m going to talk about are some practical tips on how to deliver confidently what you have prepared.We’ll also talk about the role your mind, voice and body language play and some techniques to deal with each of them.

Ok. So, let’s get started. And make sure that if you want complete advantage, you stay tuned till the end.

Your time at any interview can be divided into two parts.

Part I is the time – when you have reached the venue and are waiting at the reception or outside the interview hall. And, let me tell you, it is here that the ninety percent of your interview result gets decided.

Part II is the time when you are actually in the interview. This is where your voice, body language, stability, calmness and everything else is judged.

Ok, so let’s deal with Part I of the time when you are waiting at the reception first.

Outside the interview hall

This is the time when maximum amount of anxiety builds up. It’ll even make you feel jittery and uncomfortable in the stomach. But don’t worry. It is natural. It happens with everybody. The trick to catch it before it starts building up and channelize it correctly. And now, I’m going to teach you some techniques to do that:

1. Watch your thoughts at that moment. Your mind set is very important role. If you find yourself thinking about everything bad that can happen. Stop yourself immediately. Change your thought from what you want from them to how you can help them solve their problem. This’ll shift your perspective. And, help you tremendously by changing the way your brain would work now.

Many of you would ask me, how to do that? And, that brings me to my next tip.

2. Do something calming before the interview. Rather than spending time on social media, getting into unnecessary talks, sit quietly, go for a walk or do anything that makes you feel good. It’ll make it much easier to handle the adrenaline rush and the butterflies in your stomach.

3. Avoid coffee and aerated drinks before the interview. Have lots of water. Many of us have a habit of drinking coffee or aerated drinks. Avoid them before the interview or any important meeting. It’ll increase your anxiety. This is because, the caffeine contained in coffee is a stimulant. It puts on the “fight or flight” mechanism in your body and makes you feel jittery in the stomach.

The colas and other aerated drinks can have a similar effect on your stress. Avoid them as well.

Another problem with them is, they are diuretic in nature. Which means you’ll need to go to the bathroom more often, dehydrating your body. And, even mild dehydration can lead to depressed thoughts.

So, have a lot of water rather. It’ll help you deal with the adrenaline rush better.

4. Expand your body - Get your body upright. Spread your shoulders. This posture itself will have an almost immediate effect on you. Because when we occupy more space, we feel more confident and comfortable. This is nothing but again a way to trick your mind.

5. Breathe deeply

You’d notice that in stress situations, we start breathing from top. This is called chest breathing. This results into loss in the power in your voice and frozen mind. The correct way is to breathe from your diaphragm.

Let’s try and learn the right way to do it:

Take a deep breath. Now notice if your shoulders rise up while taking a deep breathe. If yes, it is not diaphragmatic breathing. Your shoulders should remain steady and your diaphragm should move. And, when that happens, your tummy would move rather.

Keep your hand at your diaphragm. It is just at the end of your ribs. Now, expel all the air. And, breathe without raising your shoulders. This is diaphragmatic breathing.

You see, once you know it, you can do it anywhere. And, this breathing pattern is what that doesn’t let the anxiety take over.

Inside the interview hall

1. In a job interview, there’s no doubt that you are being observed but to get over this feeling, think of it as a business meeting rather than an interview. It’ll help you do much better.

2. Don’t take protective positions
Look for arms crossed across your front body or crossed legs or touching face too often. These are all negative body postures which get you in a low confidence state.

3. Structure your answers:
If a difficult question is put to you, take a pause for a second. It’s not necessary to start immediately. And then begin by repeating the question or with something like: I believe that there are 4 important things that we need to consider here:
What this does is, it gives you a few extra seconds to think and get your thoughts together and at the same time, it forces you to structure your answer which is anyways very appealing.

4. We have talked a lot about the importance of speaking but we can’t undermine the value of being silent. While it is important to know when to speak, it is more important to know when to keep your mouth shut.

Well, this is it from me in this video. If you have any tricks to stay confident in the interview, do share them in the comments box below. And yes, if you found the video useful, can I request you to link and share it with your friends? Do subscribe to our channel to stay updated with more such videos. Thank you and I’ll see you in the next one.