Interview Day

I had an interview recently. It had been a while since I have done one and I wasn't sure how nervous I would be before or during it.

Ok, so I have a bit of a cheat to mitigate fear. I was in the military and did a couple of deployments to hazardous areas. I've been at gunpoint and knifepoint, not related to being in the military but those aren't stories for today. For a lot of situations, I can just think, "Well I've been through worse". BUT, that hasn't always helped when it came to the nerves and anxiety that might come from something like an interview. And I mention those previous experiences to point out that even for someone like me who has been in some potentially life-threatening circumstances, interviews still used to wreak havoc on my nerves.

There are two things I've added to my metaphorical toolkit and practiced with over the years that I believe helped me. One is mindfulness/meditation and the other is drawing from things I've learned from cognitive psychology. I will briefly explain how I made use of those things on the day of the interview and then later share how I ended up feeling about the interview.

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Cognitive Psychology: changing your thoughts to change your feelings​

I did my undergraduate study in Psychology but this isn't' intended to be a complete picture of this subset of the field. If you are in or studied the field I hope you don't get annoyed if I don't accurately convey the ideas. This is more about how I used my understanding to keep a good mindset for the interview. But I do want to tell you a little about the grandfather of cognitive psychology, Albert Ellis, who developed a method called Rational Emotive Behavior Therapy (REBT) and this great term of his that has stuck with me, "musterbating". He talked about a lot of anxieties and other negative emotions coming about because people get stuck thinking in "musts". Such as, "I must be able to do such and such well", or "that person simply must like me" and when reality doesn't match our expectations it can cause problems. He urges his readers to stop thinking in musts, stop musterbating. In other words, getting stuck in, shoulda woulda coulda, type thinking can do a number on your emotional state.

So I did my best to avoid any thoughts like "I have to do really good in this interview or else". I recognized that I was probably going to goof on an answer, and my tongue was probably going to decide to defy me and act goofy at some point but as long as I didn't get stuck feeling stupid about any mistakes I could just recover and move on.

Another concept I try to use regularly is thinking about the worst outcomes and then thinking of what the consequences would be. Psychologists don't necessarily have the monopoly on this concept but they have successfully incorporated it into therapeutic techniques. Now I didn't need to think of any drastic outcomes for this day. I just asked myself, "What if I don't get the job?" and the answer is that I would be bummed cause rejection is never fun, AND YET it wouldn't change my plan at all. I'm studying towards eventually working in cybersecurity and the path I'm on involves some time in a general IT role. If I got the job it would simply mean I was working in the field faster which is of course a good thing, and I would still be studying for the certifications. So either way, the outcome could be temporarily emotionally charged but need not derail the bigger plan. While I have gotten better over time using these techniques to manage anxious thoughts, I didn't want to spend the morning brooding over it and that's where mindfulness came in handy.

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Mindfulness: accept what is

Mindfulness meditations are great both because they can have tangible benefits as you practice them over time and because they are a great entry point into meditation. I have done other types of meditation over the years. I happen to like sitting in stillness, but I appreciate that with mindfulness you can just do it anywhere anytime. You don't have to try and force yourself into some altered zen-like state, you just notice what's going on around you and within you. That's it!

I just took a moment periodically to pay attention to what I could hear, whether it was birds singing outside, a car passing, or someone using power tools to do work in their yard. The house was quiet so there wasn't much to hear in my immediate area. I was more focused on sounds and sensations since in this case, I was doing it to try and keep my brain from running away with thoughts and I had already used the other techniques to tackle the thought patterns head on. I have had lots of practice dealing with thoughts so it has gotten somewhat easier to quiet my thoughts. But when thoughts do come I like the way one guided meditation suggested responding. You simply notice them and let them move on when they are ready, much like you do with clouds. But I didn't spend my morning going back and forth between these techniques.

Things I did before my interview​

• Dishes
• Laundry
• Shined my shoes
• Watched a couple of episodes of SOA
• Take a shower

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In other words, I tried to have a relaxing morning. No, I don't find doing dishes or laundry relaxing by any means, but I was watching Sons of Anarchy while I did those things and that kept me pretty well occupied. I did consider playing with some code early in the morning then I decided against it. You know how it can go with code, it's going well until something doesn't work and then you're scratching your head and getting frustrated and I just didn't want to get into that mind frame before an interview.

Did it work? Was I nervous?

I didn't get anxious about the interview. After I left the house there was a brief flutter of nerves in the pit of my stomach and it went away. I was slightly nervous about finding the place but I had a pretty good idea where it was so I knew it wasn't going to be a problem. I got there fine, the interview went well. I wasn't as articulate in all my responses as I would have liked but I knew that was likely ahead of time and I didn't let it get to me. I left the interview feeling positive about it.

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What about you?

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Will something similar work for you when you have an interview (or some other potentially stressful and important meeting) coming up? Well unfortunately I can't know what exactly will work for you. I do hope this can give you some ideas of how you might manage this for yourself. If you've yet to find any tools to help you manage stress and anxiety mindfulness is a great tool and entry point to meditative practices and cognitive psychology is very effective in research studies. Managing your expectations, anxieties or other emotions that might derail your mood is a valuable skill to learn and practice. As with any skill, remember that wherever you are now you can improve.

Photo by Steve Halama on Unsplash