Ask HN: I'm desperate. How can I overcome anxiety in interview situations?
10 comments
Encounter or Exposure Therapy - i.e. practice realistic interviews, hundreds of times, until you are bored by them, rather than stressed out.
I'm sure there are Interview Prep/Coaching Services that will provide this as a service - but you could also just apply to lots of jobs and just do loads of real interviews; you do need a job, after all.
If you go into the interview with the mindset that this is you training & doing interview practice, rather than a "real" job interview, this can take the pressure off. Your good CV should get you to the interview stage generally, then you just train yourself by doing lots of interviews.
I'm sure there are Interview Prep/Coaching Services that will provide this as a service - but you could also just apply to lots of jobs and just do loads of real interviews; you do need a job, after all.
If you go into the interview with the mindset that this is you training & doing interview practice, rather than a "real" job interview, this can take the pressure off. Your good CV should get you to the interview stage generally, then you just train yourself by doing lots of interviews.
You could even apply to jobs you don't intend to take unless they blow your socks off with a huge salary increase. It's supposedly a good thing to do anyway. If you do 3 interviews/year, after a few years, your stress would likely be lower during interviews.
First thing: don't be so hard on yourself. Everyone gets anxious in interviews because the stakes are high and the interviewer has almost all the power.
Some things that I've seen work... 1) do lots of interviews. Once you get used to the (awful) dynamic and realize it's the process, not you as a human, that's wrong, it feels a little more okay to fail, which should reduce anxiety 2) meditate before the interview. I like the headspace SOS meditations. 3) work on open source projects. I've seen this be the deciding factor not due to some vague community contribution, but because your potential employer can see your code and because it's been peer reviewed. This command a certain flavor of local celebrity that can be very powerful, especially if you slay in that domain.
Good luck.
Some things that I've seen work... 1) do lots of interviews. Once you get used to the (awful) dynamic and realize it's the process, not you as a human, that's wrong, it feels a little more okay to fail, which should reduce anxiety 2) meditate before the interview. I like the headspace SOS meditations. 3) work on open source projects. I've seen this be the deciding factor not due to some vague community contribution, but because your potential employer can see your code and because it's been peer reviewed. This command a certain flavor of local celebrity that can be very powerful, especially if you slay in that domain.
Good luck.
Understand that the interviewers are there to have a conversation. If you're always ending up with antagonistic interviewers, I would say you've been really unlucky.
Like you, I do my best too when the interviewer is friendly, or wants to help. Most interviewers go through some sort of training too make them better at this. They're there to help you, if you get stuck just think out aloud. If you're uncomfortable with that, then practice. I don't agree with throwing hard problems at interviewees, but understanding how they work with others to write up a solution is what companies are generally looking for since for the most part you will be working on teams.
One suggestion is that the next job you have, actively participate in the interview process, understand how the hiring panel works, what they're looking for and what they aren't, etc. This helped me understand and optimize for the behaviors that these places are looking for.
Like you, I do my best too when the interviewer is friendly, or wants to help. Most interviewers go through some sort of training too make them better at this. They're there to help you, if you get stuck just think out aloud. If you're uncomfortable with that, then practice. I don't agree with throwing hard problems at interviewees, but understanding how they work with others to write up a solution is what companies are generally looking for since for the most part you will be working on teams.
One suggestion is that the next job you have, actively participate in the interview process, understand how the hiring panel works, what they're looking for and what they aren't, etc. This helped me understand and optimize for the behaviors that these places are looking for.
I'm in a similar boat. I usually ask beforehand if letting me do a take-home version of the live coding challenge is a reasonable accommodation. It gets mixed results. Some say that it's no problem as long as I turn it in that day. Others refuse to consider it. Predictably, I fail to perform adequately in those interviews, and they don't give me an offer. This seems like a big waste of everyone's time, but tech hiring processes are notoriously great at wasting people's time.
Anxiety is a result of being uncomfortable, which is understandable. Interviews suck, especially the FAANG ones.
So - how do you make yourself not uncomfortable? Practice. Make interviewing normal, and it becomes just another thing. I recommend https://interviewing.io/, you can do live practice interviews. After a few, you'll just be comfortable with it.
I would also research outcome independence. If you learn to not care whether or not you pass an interview, your comfort level spikes through the roof, and you ultimately improve your odds of passing, oddly enough.
So - how do you make yourself not uncomfortable? Practice. Make interviewing normal, and it becomes just another thing. I recommend https://interviewing.io/, you can do live practice interviews. After a few, you'll just be comfortable with it.
I would also research outcome independence. If you learn to not care whether or not you pass an interview, your comfort level spikes through the roof, and you ultimately improve your odds of passing, oddly enough.
Your problem is you take things too seriously.
I don't know your financial situation, but if you aren't in dire straits, then why are you pressuring yourself so much. Why so much anxiety, relax bro. You're ruining your health too, bro I got anxious just by reading you.
I don't know your financial situation, but if you aren't in dire straits, then why are you pressuring yourself so much. Why so much anxiety, relax bro. You're ruining your health too, bro I got anxious just by reading you.
I understand where you're coming from and I'm very much aware of how unhelpful my perspective is. After much work I can mostly convince myself ahead of time but then it all turns sour once the call starts, and I can feel my body vibrating. It's visceral.
I've certainly improved over the years, but as I apply to more senior positions my issues are way more prominent/holding me back.
I've certainly improved over the years, but as I apply to more senior positions my issues are way more prominent/holding me back.
This sucks, I really don't know how to help. Visceral feeling out of nowhere sounds like a traumatic response.
The good thing is there are companies that don't use leetcode.
The good thing is there are companies that don't use leetcode.
You probably are not calibrated correctly to how many interviews you should be doing. One out of seven is a pretty good success rate. For me I just did interviews until I started to get bored during them and that's when I started getting offers.
You could always try the subtle art of not giving a f*ck:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EmLbOJZULU
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9EmLbOJZULU
I found this guy's course helped me a lot
https://job-interview-answers.com/
https://job-interview-answers.com/
Always remember that there is no punishment for messing up, even if it seems that way.
I've had a decade long career, with the latter half at some decently big name tech companies. I code, I ship, the features I've worked on and led development on are now in the hands of millions of users. Unfortunately I was recently laid off, not due to performance issues. My whole team was deleted, and I understand the motivations for it, it is what it is.
Over the years, I've had an uncomfortably high interview failure rate despite my successes. I've only had success because my resume looks great; when I ship I do it well.
But I succeeded in getting my last job because I passed one out of 7 interviews. The more I talk to my peers as I've moved up in the tech world I've learned they do not have similarly high failure rates. They often have competing offers.
I am comfortable when secure in my job. Comfortable timing myself in Leetcode. My brain connects the dots. I take steps and decide which steps to take from there. Easy, because I can build the model/graph in my head, I am maintaining useful state.
But when I have to be face-to-face with someone who is judging me, who is determining my salary, etc, and I fall apart. I can barely contain my physical discomfort. Super obvious basic problems become complete mysteries, as my brain empties out all useful state, and I'm therefore unable to make connections without repeating the problem or concern multiple times. And because of this I'm very very slow. So slow that it is common feedback from interviewers, something that indicates to them I'm not senior enough.
The only common detail about all my successful interviews that was that the interviewer was super kind and I was able to maintain some confidence in my actions.
I also end up making the most absurd mistakes. Typing-variable-declarations-wrong level problems, and I'm utterly confused when they happen. It's as if I'm in fight-or-flight mode and I'm just making decisions, to make any progress at all, to get to the end of the stressful interview, but I make those decisions before I'm conscious of them, so it's a self-defeating loop.
I've watched my laid off teammates get positions at Google/Meta/etc, and I know I can't pass those interviews (I bombed the Meta coding sessions a few years ago). My anxiety is worse than ever now, as I am solidly without a job. I feel confident I can go work for a bank and be anonymous, there's plenty of jobs out there. But I want to be at the Big Names, and part of that is passing these types of interviews.
How have others resolved the particular problem of performance anxiety, being graded, etc? What steps have you taken, where have you succeeded, etc.