Do you feel like you are bad at job interviews? or maybe you haven’t had one for a long time, or perhaps it’s your very first one coming up. There are plenty of reasons why we might feel that we aren’t great at job interviews.
It could be a lack of confidence, a lack of experience, or nerves simply getting the better of you. But there is good news! all of these things can be overcome and in this article, we’ll aim to show you how.
Why Am I So Bad at Job Interviews?
Confidence
Gaining confidence in a job interview environment comes from the experience of job interviews and having confidence in the content of the answers you provide.
To improve in these areas you should check out our article 13 Top Job Interview Tips.
It is possible to grow your confidence with your answers by spending some time before your interview to go over your own experiences, skills, and knowledge. Often the answers and information we need are already in our heads and things we already know, we just need to take some time to unlock this information and keep it fresh in our memory for the upcoming job interview.
Sometimes our confidence can take a knock because we are fearful that stronger candidates may have applied for the job or that the people interviewing you might stifle you with certain questions.
But it is worth remembering that everyone interviewing is in the same boat and it is not always the strongest candidate who secures the job offer. Interview performance and characteristics like enthusiasm, determination and passion can all go in a person’s favour. Finally, don’t forget, to even be offered an interview means you must have impressed with your job application!
Lack of Experience
Real-world experience in job interviews is something that you can only gain from doing job interviews. For a lot of people this isn’t possible because they don’t change jobs often or on the occasions that they do they have secured work within their first interviews secured.
Without experience there is the possibility to make easily avoidable job interview mistakes. Check out our article 6 Job Interview Mistakes and That Will Prevent You From Getting Hired.
You shouldn’t let a lack of experience play on your mind. Through proper preparation and approaching your interview with the right positive attitude you can achieve success without the experience.
An exercise that inexperienced people might find useful is to practice a job interview with a friend or family member. Depending on your preference you could simulate an interview in a more formal environment and look to deliver the perfect answer the first time, or you might prefer a more relaxed situation where you take your time to formulate an answer and work out the best possible response.
Nerves
Unfortunately, there isn’t one magic spell to extinguish nerves from your body in the run-up to your job interview. Things that we would recommend to help settle your nerves and in doing so build your confidence is to invest the time in the days before your interview to prepare properly.
For useful tips check out our articles:
Can You Get a Job With a Bad Interview?
11 Things You Must Do the Night Before a Job Interview
If you are looking for some useful advice on how to reduce your nerves in general we looked online for advice and here are some of our favourite picks:
How to Calm Down: 22 Things to Do When You’re Anxious or Angry – this medically reviewed article from healthline.com gives some great times on how to calm yourself down. These tips could be useful in the days before your interview and even right up until you walk through the door to your interview.
10 natural remedies for reducing anxiety and stress – another medically reviewed article offering advice on some of the natural remedies that stronger sufferers of anxiety and stress may want to consider.
Failing to prepare
The best and most essential advice we can offer you is to prepare, prepare and then prepare some more before your job interview.
We have summed this up and talked about preparing across many of our articles. We would recommend you look at:
The Ultimate Guide On How To Prepare For A Job Interview
The benefits of thorough preparation cannot be understated. Through the right job interview preparation you can achieve many things:
- More knowledgeable about the employer
- More knowledgeable about the job role
- Greater awareness of your own skills, abilities, and experience
- A better understanding of how you could fit in with the organisation
- Deliver better answers
- Build your confidence
- Set yourself up in a better position for future job interviews
Learning from feedback
Job interview feedback following an unsuccessful interview can be a useful tool for understanding where you performed well and what areas you could improve on.
To learn more about how to utilise feedback to your advantage, check out our article – How To Turn Job Interview Feedback Into Offers.
Sometimes employers will automatically provide you with feedback, other times you will have to ask. Receiving and acting on the feedback can help you understand any issues with your job interview technique and answers given but also your suitability and shortcomings for the job role in questions, which can be especially useful if you are targetting one kind of job type.
Feedback could mean you assess the answers you give or give you an idea of additional learning you need to do to be more likely to secure that type of job role.
Feedback is subjective and you might not always agree with it but it is free advice after all. As Baz Luhrmann once sang, be careful whose advice you buy but be patient with those who supply it.
How Many Job Interviews Before Receiving a Job Offer?
There is no defined number for how many job interviews it should take you to land a job. There are many factors that can result in you becoming successful or unsuccessful in a job interview.
Applying for jobs and putting in the required preparation for an interview is time-consuming so in a perfect world we would receive a job offer from the first interview we had. Unfortunately, this isn’t always the case but we should look to do what we can to make sure we get the big thumbs up in our next interview.
Read: 7 Things to do Immediately After a Job Interview
If the rejections become consistent and you feel that you are still bad at job interviews then it would be worthwhile absorbing as much advice as possible and taking a step back to assess how you are going about everything and consider whether you are applying for the right types of job roles and whether you should refocus on jobs you are more likely to obtain.
