Help!

Anonymous

November 18, 2019 at 1:03 PM EDT

Good morning everyone, I need some advice. I suck at interviewing. I have social anxiety; I get very nervous, socially awkward and lose all confidence. I sweat through my clothes (nervous sweat). I rush through the interview so I answer my questions with incomplete thoughts. I do very well with phone interviews but in person and FaceTime I fall apart. This doesn’t limit me in my job performance because I’m really good at my job because I only chose positions I’m passionate about and that I feel like I could be the most impactful. It hasn’t always been this bad I feel like this is the worse it has gotten. When I’m comfortable with people I don’t have this problem at all. I don’t know if my condition progressed because of the pressure I put on myself to get back to work right away because I just moved to a new state and want this to work out. I get lots of interviews, just last week I did 7 and I bombed them all. I really need your advice. Thank you in advance

Comments

SophieG

11/20/19 at 12:55 PM EDT

I also want to give my tuppence worth on the what is your weakness question and answer. If someone said to me just interviewing I would think that was lame. Apologies! However if they said interviewing and that translates in the workplace to sometimes being not so good at presenting to large groups of people I don’t know then I would think ‘yes insightful‘
1 upvote

SophieG

11/20/19 at 12:52 PM EDT

Check out the Amy Cuddy TED talk - c20mins. She gives some great ideas on how to prep your body language in a way that creates a positive feedback loop for adrenaline but prevents cortisol - the stress hormone. You also could probably do with practising some mindfulness techniques. Firstly tuning into what is going on for you - the range of emotions you are feeling, and where you are feeling them. Usually the gut. Then imagine taking that emotion out of you, looking at it, acknowledging it, accepting it, putting it back. Bizarrely that process of acknowledging rather than fighting your anxiety can actually make it much more manageable. 1 upvote