Reducing Anxiety Around Interviews

There are two kinds of people: those who get anxious around interviewing and job-hunting, and liars. The stress of interviewing is so ubiquitous that it’s a societal cliche. It’s especially true during times like now, when layoffs keep rearing their ugly heads and the job market is much more weighted toward employers than candidates. Job hunts are a marathon rather than a sprint, often. More than ever, it’s important for candidates to know how to reduce anxiety throughout the process to help them make it to the end.

As someone who has spent a lot of time on both sides of the interviewing table, here are some things that I’ve found helpful:

Before the Interview

Ask for details

Interviews are difficult enough, they don’t also need to be a pop quiz. Ideally, your recruiter will give you details on what to expect before the interview. But if they don’t, or if you have questions, don’t be afraid to ask! Here are the things a recruiter should be able to tell you:

Your schedule

Will it be a single interview or a series? Will it all be done in a single day or will it be spread out over multiple days? Are there any breaks scheduled, like for lunch or to give you a moment to clear your mind in between sessions?

Session topics

What will each session cover? For engineering roles, this could be a system design problem or a hands-on coding challenge. For manager roles, it could also be a session focused on leadership, working with cross-functional partners, etc.

Your recruiter should be able to tell you the topic of the session and at least a sentence or two explaining the specifics of the things the interview might cover.

Interviewer details

How many interviewers will there be? Interviews are often 1-on-1, but it’s not uncommon to have two interviewers. Having a panel of three or more interviewers for a single interview session is rarer, but not unheard of — particularly for very senior positions.

Your recruiter should also be able to tell you more about your interviewers themselves. Ideally, this would be names, titles, and how they relate to the role. Having this information can be useful in determining what sorts of things the interviewer might be looking for.

Interview format

This encompasses things like whether the interview will be open-ended questions, whether you’ll be doing your system design on a whiteboard, will you be coding on a laptop, and will you have access to resources like the internet or documentation?

Also things like will the entire time be spent doing coding or will there be technical questions and/or questions about your work experience.

Signals

What information — often referred to as “signals” —are they looking to learn about you in each session? For example, in the system design interview:

1. Are they looking for a high-level architecture of the entire system?
2. Are they looking for you to pick a piece of the system and dive deep into it?
3. Are they expecting code? Pseudocode? Class definitions?
4. Are they looking for a focus on the front-end or the back-end? Perhaps the API endpoints and schemas?

While all of the above are fair game for a system design interview, there is usually a subset that the interviewers are actually trying to get signal on. If interviewing for a back-end role, spending time fleshing out the architecture of the client — beyond what might meaningfully influence the back-end architecture — won’t really help you. It wouldn’t be points against you, but it also wouldn’t be useful data on the specific signals they’re trying to gather.

If the recruiter can’t or won’t give you these details, that’s a yellow flag to me. It means that either the team/company hasn’t thought about these things, or that their interview process relies on the element of surprise — neither of which are great. Knowledge is power. The more you know about the interview process, the better you can prepare yourself to knock it out of the park!

Use a dedicated email address for job hunting

One of the most nerve-wracking points in the job hunt is the period between when you interview and when you hear from your recruiter. If you’re anything like me, every email that comes in makes you think, “maybe this is it!” But after the tenth junk email, your eye starts to twitch. Every email could be the email!

So you end up spending hours, days, potentially even weeks getting your hopes up every time you receive an email, only to have them dashed by the supposed UN Secretary General who apparently doesn’t know how to spell their own name, or a Nigerian “prince”asking you for money. Setting it up so that it’s immediately clear when it’s the email versus when it’s just a regular email can go a long way toward smoothing out that rollercoaster of emotion.

I think the gold standard is to be able to have a different notification, complete with a different sound, for your job-related emails. One of the easiest ways to do that is to have a completely separate email address and use a different email app. You could also try using your normal email address with a different email app, if it supports filtered notifications.

Make a plan with your recruiter for after

A great way of helping to manage your anxiety after the interview is to make a plan with your recruiter beforehand. Ideally, you schedule a time to debrief, once the decision has been made. That way, you know exactly when you’ll know. Some recruiters might be hesitant to lock down a specific date and time, given the fact that getting people to give interview feedback — especially a group of people — is a bit like herding cats. But you can let them know that it’s okay if the debrief needs to move, and that it’s just helpful to have something on the books.

At the very least, they should be able to tell you roughly when you’ll hear from them. If the plan is for them to call you on the phone, I would also recommend asking for the phone number they’ll be using to call you. That will help you avoid having to pick up a call from any unrecognized phone number, which means talking to a lot of marketers and other spam.

After the Interview

Now comes the hard part. Hopefully the things you did before the interview have helped to make this period less stressful. But here are some things that you can do to after the interview try and make it a bit easier for yourself:

Distract yourself

At this point, you’ve done everything you can do to influence the decision. You’re just waiting to hear back. And no amount of perseveration will change the outcome in any way. But that’s not the way that brains work, particularly for those of us prone to anxiety. That doesn’t mean that you have to let yourself sit with your anxious thoughts, however.

One of the best ways to do that is to not give yourself the space to spend time with your anxiety. For some people, this might mean throwing yourself into work or a passion project. Perhaps you plan to do something you’re really excited about after the interview, like going out to your favorite restaurant, a camping trip, or even a spa day. It doesn’t have to be expensive either, it could just be hanging out with friends or finding a place to go pet puppies.

Regardless of how you decide to distract yourself, try to notice if you start feeling more anxiety. It’s totally okay to feel that anxiety, but it’s something we can redirect to help keep stress levels down.

Know when to follow up

Lastly, it’s important to know when it’s okay to follow up with your recruiter. Sometimes they’ll forget to give you an update, or an email gets sent to the wrong address, or the recruiter goes on vacation, or the recruiter keeps waiting to give you an update because they almost have an answer for you. Unfortunately, it could even be that your recruiter is ghosting you. Giving your recruiter a nudge is a great way to reset your expectations and reduce your anxiety.

But how long should you wait before reaching out?

It depends.

If a recruiter tells you that you’ll hear from them by the end of the week, following up on Monday or even Friday is perfectly reasonable. If you weren’t told when you’ll hear back by, a week is a good amount of time to wait. If you still don’t hear from them, you could follow up again the day after need.

Final Thoughts

Anything related to interviewing and job-hunting can be rife with anxiety. While you might not ever be able to make it completely stress-free, a little bit of preparation can help to make it significantly more manageable.

Happy job-hunting!