Ask HN: How do you deal with performance anxiety during interviews?

Disclaimer: I run a for-profit in the space of technical interview prep: http://InterviewKickstart.com.

From what I see doing interview training for a living: more practice is the key. Practice with mock interviews until you reach a point of (almost) de-sensitization.

But before you take mock interviews, you must prepare. Otherwise the feedback and the experience is not very useful. Do a number of problems and a variety of problems from numerous sources available. Only then do mock interviews. Preferably with experienced engineers. Use pramp.com for free mock interviews.

The process can take months, but you're bound to get better that way. Practice is the only way anybody gets better at anything, anyway.

Also note, that this interview practice is going to be useful to you in your daily work also. Training for interviews is that beautiful hack, that has dividends in a number of different ways.

Lucky you! You have a chance to make some money off this HN thread. Good luck!

That's more of an advertisement than a disclaimer

His comment had the most actionable help of thread

I relate to your condition and I have a similar cognitive interruption when and where severe anxiety kicks in. For me it includes a change of color and I sweat profusely. There is no hiding it.

I have always just powered through because I have found that once it passes I return fully. For me it is about some magic comfort level. Once I get there and it usually takes a little time(weeks not minutes or hours) this isn't an issue anymore. Interviews are the worst because I don't have that time and they are usually with people you don't know, which is at least part of the trigger.

I didn't want to use any medication to treat it, but I have helped to manage it. For me an exhaustive workout a few hours before the interview helps. The other thing is diet, in my case, if I focus on high-protein and low carb and that also seems to help.

These aren't recommendations, but I relate, and I thought it might be helpful to look at broad approach to managing it on your end.

Thanks for sharing, it's nice to know the same thing happens to other people.

I get the sweating thing too. Powering through doesn't always work, it becomes so obvious that it's awkward not to mention it. It's had a major effect on my life and career.

I found that mock interviews helped me to some degree with this. It's hard for me to talk and write code simultaneously, so practicing in front of someone who is an experienced interviewer helped me gain some confidence in whiteboard coding.

That makes sense. I think its the talking while thinking/writing part thats hard. When I'm around strangers I usually want to fill the silence with some kind of conversation, silence feels awkward, yet I need to allow myself time to think.

This is exactly how I am. It takes a little practice to balance out the silence with speaking but when you find your comfort level, you'll be ok. :) I've told interviewers something to the effect of, "Sorry, give me one second to think -- it's hard to interleave my thoughts and talking aloud" and they were really ok with it.

Good luck!

Practice. I bought a whiteboard, mounted it on the wall, and practice questions from interviewcake as if I were in front of a live audience. It feels kind of silly, but definitely helped me improve recall under the pressure of an interview. Putting yourself in an environment that most closely resembles the stress of the real thing to induce some or all of the anxiety is paramount!

Repeating this exercise at least once daily has produced real results for me, and helped me get comfortable thinking and speaking about algorithms outside of my normal operating environment (i.e. in front of a keyboard ;).

I've gone through all the questions on that website at least twice many of them three times with a whiteboard, I'll try putting it on the wall.

Like I said though I knew that I had done this question before and knew how to do it. Just like I knew that (x > 0 || x < 0) is the same thing as (x != 0). I think its the actual being in front of a stranger part that I need to practice most.

> Practice. I bought a whiteboard, mounted it on the wall, and practice questions from interviewcake as if I were in front of a live audience.

Do you think going through all the questions on Interviewcake prepared you well for interviews?

I've been going through them and I either find them to be very easy, or very hard. Not much in between. Actually, come to think of it, that's usually how interview questions go for me, too.

You might want to check to see if you have a local Whiteboarding Meetup. We have one here in Seattle where people can practice interviewing. If you don't have one you could probably set one up.

The more you do it, the less nervous you'll feel. I'd suggest lining up a series of low-stakes 'practice' interviews (10 or more of them). Real jobs at real companies, but the kind of jobs you don't particularly want, and the kind of companies you wouldn't normally apply to. That way you won't feel any pressure to perform well; and you'll get practice interviewing. And who knows, you might luck into the perfect position just by chance.

Thanks. I think this seems to be the general consensus. Just do more interviews. Luckily the job market allows for us to do that now. I just wonder if I can push back the other interviews for jobs I care about that I have scheduled already.

This might be a tangent. I attribute my bombing a big4 interview in 2014 to restless and sleepless night the day before the interview (it was a very senior dev position and the role and responsibility described by the recruiter made me super excited. Actually, the whole week had been pretty much sleepless nights) which 'disabled' my hunger, and the lethal combination of sleep deprivation and overnight fasting manifested itself and I literally saw myself failing at things I shouldn't have but I could do nothing about it. It was a 9 am meeting and I was in a cold hall which added to the misery. I was groggy, about as articulate as a drunken child and utterly failed to benefit from the generous hints the interviewer was giving me. I felt sorry for him TBH. It was the company that had contacted me and I felt pretty bad for the recruiter as well for having fared so miserably. The biggest takeaway from this experience was to get sufficient sleep the night before important events. And to bloody eat breakfast.

So, are you sure your failure is not due to external elements like mine (which was one off fyi)?

The symptoms are the same but I felt like I got enough sleep and had enough to eat. I could probably cut down on the caffeine though.

Would you say all of your shortcomings are due to external factors beyond your control?

In this specific case, yes.

I try to center myself. For example, I focus fully on breath for a few breaths, think 'I am breathing in, I am breathing out'. Focus on how your feet/bum/spine are supporting your weight, readjust slightly if your posture is awful. Get whatever problem you're working on out of your head.

After a few seconds of this, I come back to the problem and usually am able to do at least slightly better. It's like power cycling your brain after it gets stuck.

Smoke a big fat fattie before rolling into the interview. Eat three pages out of Cracking the Coding Interview for breakfast. This is how I got my jobs at Google, Facebook, and now currently a senior research fellow at MSFT.

One technique I've found helpful is starting by writing tests for the interview puzzle (on the whiteboard), and then explaining that I will check these tests once I have a solution. That means if I get stuck or just have a bug I'm not immediately interrupted by interviewer, and the tests provide a way of debugging stuff in a structured way.

For more details: https://codewithoutrules.com/2016/04/04/interview-puzzles/

I just found this other Ask HN thread on the topic that has some good thoughts https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=1618500

I'd say practice practice practice. Try to create a testing environment which is close to reality. Also if you currently applying and interviewing for jobs, I'd prioritize then and start with the ones I find less interesting.

Another idea: Find a local meetup group or something similar where you can give a talk about performance anxiety during interviews.

Just tell your story to others and you'll get invaluable feedback. That said I know you asked here for advice, but discussing on a forum is too asynchronous. More like a take home test as you already described.

It sounds like a really shitty thing to do, but one thing that really helped me in interviews is basically going to more of them. If a company sounds you out, and you're not entirely sure that you want to join them, why not go to the interview anyway?

Obviously, don't go to an interview every month, but don't wait until you absolutely must have a new job. Get the feel of a few places, and if you turn them down then there's no harm done.

Happened to me couple days back during a 3hr technical trial project / interview..

Was presented with a simple recursion problem but I completely blanked out even with the interviewer nudging me all along.

I was able to write it on my half hour bus ride home...