I was recently asked by Indeed.com to share my best tactics for calming interview nerves and, bar none, everything I came up with had to do with preparation. It’s true what they say, ‘Preparation breeds confidence. Confidence breeds success.’ Well, job interviews fall right in line with that, so it’s important to take each interview seriously and spend time diligently preparing for it.

In this blog, I’ll share with you the 3 tips I shared with Indeed.com, along with 1 additional tip that happens to be my all-time favorite.

If you have questions about any of these tips or anything else you read on my blog, please feel free to shoot me a quick email at Lezlie@ResumeLezlie.com. I’m always happy to help in any way I can.

Alright, so let’s dive right in to my top tips to ace your interview through awesome preparation:

Tip #1: RESEARCH

This really is one of the most important things you can do to boost your confidence before an interview. Try to learn as much as you can about the position, the company, the interviewer(s) – everything. The whole point of this step is to use what you learn to strategically present yourself in a way that best fits the needs of the job and company. 

The true key to a successful interview (and something many people don’t consider), is to think of your audience and present your experience and skills in a way that is most relevant to them and their needs. Put yourself in their position, think about what they’re looking for, and try to present yourself in a way that matches that as closely as possible (without stretching the truth too much).

The more you know about the job, company, interviewer, etc., the more confident you’ll be!

Tip #2: PREP YOUR BRAND

Your professional brand reflects your career reputation and communicates the essence of the value you bring to a new potential employer.

The easiest way I’ve found to do this in prepping for a job interview is to pick 3 main qualifications you want to convey about yourself and concentrate on those as you mentally prepare for the interview. For instance, if you want to focus mainly on your communication, leadership, and teambuilding skills, you will want to prep anecdotes (stories) from your career to demonstrate those qualifications. Think about a time when you excelled, and how that represents 1 of your 3 main focus areas.

An important thing to keep in mind is that people hire people they trust, and stories are much more believable and engaging than short answers. Prepping some highly relevant anecdotes can go a long way in demonstrating your professional brand and ultimately ‘selling’ your qualifications for the position.

Tip #3: EMPOWER YOURSELF

Develop a method of boosting your confidence. Whether that’s using power poses, repeating positive affirmations, or any other confidence-boosting techniques, it’s important to know you can take control of your nerves and calm yourself in a stressful situation.

My favorite little brain-hack for staying confident in a job interview is to remember that the interviewer probably hopes you’re ‘the one’.

For most people, this seems to go against everything they thought they knew about interviewing, but hear me out. Hiring is strenuous, and recruiters get hundreds of applicants for each open position. Just like you or me – they don’t want to do any more work than they have to, so most decision-makers feel like the sooner the right person shows up, the better.

So basically, they’re rooting for you to be awesome. And who doesn’t love that?

Tip #4: PRETEND THEY’RE SOMEONE YOU LIKE

Alright, I promised a fourth, previously undisclosed tip, and it truly is one of my favorites.

Like the last one, it’s more of a brain hack than anything else, but if you can pull it off, it really does help calm interview nerves.

So, the 4^th tip to keep calm in an interview is to pretend they’re someone you like. This does 3 things:

1. it makes you less nervous, so you feel and appear more confident
2. It makes them feel good
3. and it makes them like you: people like people who like them

For the purposes of this exercise, you don’t have to think of someone specific. Just focus on that feeling you get when you’re around someone that makes you smile – like really, genuinely smile. Then practice recalling that feeling and that smile at will, because when you flash a warm, genuine smile at someone, it is powerful. You may feel awkward about it, especially the practicing part, but it works!