Feature

Fighting nervousness in interviews

Amanat Ahmed

In case of facing interview, it is almost certain that the interviewee becomes nervous. In a Career Development Seminar, arranged by the Faculty of Business Studies, DU; an HR Director of a well-established Multinational Commercial Bank told the attendees, “We expect the candidates to be nervous in the interview. If they are not, then it creates some sorts of ambiguity.” So if you become nervous, do not blame it on yourself. It is quite natural.

Although one is expected to be nervous, it should not be taken as granted. Individuals should continuously try minimising the degree of their nervousness. I am going to make few 'easy to say but hard to do' suggestions in order to lessen nervousness of any kind for interviews and viva.

When you face the interviewer, think that, s/he is a human being like you. S/he is not going to kill you if you cannot answer a question. If you do not know, then boldly say that you don't know. And don't let this failure to cripple your mind. If you let this happen, you will certainly be bogged down and your woes will only increase. Do not think about the questions that you did not answer instead focus on the other questions and try to answer them confidently.

Try to be consistent with what you are saying as inconsistency will arise more questions and more doubts in the interviewer's mind leading to a negative impact. Try to make sure that you know well about your CV. In a nutshell, try to give less scope to your interviewer to ask questions on controversial issues.

Another way to overcome your nervousness is to arrange and participate in mock interviews. If it is not possible, then have imaginary conversations in front of the mirror. Try to break the shackles of your mind and be expressive everywhere.

If you are studying in any business school or alike, try to make full participation in the presentations, group discussions, case studies, group assignments, etc. Be active all through. Because of this interactive system, business graduates tend to do well in the interviews or expected to do well. However it is not obvious to say that only business schools have this system. The main intention is to say that you should make the best of the opportunities that you get in your institutions.

Make sure you have enough information at your disposal. Make yourself well informed about the organization itself and the responsibilities in the job that you are applying for. The more you know, the more questions you will be able to anticipate and the more prepared you can be. Because doing well in the interviews depends a lot on how correctly you anticipate the questions and how well you are prepared in answering them. If you are prepared well enough then you will definitely be able to answer in the most impressive manner.

As I said earlier, this is very easy to say but difficult to do. With the growing number of opportunities, the competition is growing even more intensely. Besides job interview, one also has to face interviews for visa, viva voce as a part of the academic evaluation, etc. Therefore, it is for our sake we must prepare well for an interview. Hope my suggestions will be helpful to the readers. Wish you all the best!

(Student of DU)