“How to appear confident in an interview” was the title of a recent blog I read online*. In fact, the internet is full of tips and tricks to help you feel more secure and have more confidence in yourself, and a whole plethora of other scenarios. If you’ve recently attended a job interview, you’ll be all too familiar with the sense of anxiety, dread, stress and nervousness.
But, it begs the question – is it enough to simply appear confident?
How can you actually begin to feel more authentically confident?
To start us off, here’s a list of the suggestions made in the blog:
- Dress appropriately
- Stay alert
- Practice breathing techniques
- Prepare and rehearse your answers
- Respond thoughtfully
- Consider eye contact
- Evaluate your body movements
- Think positively
These are all great suggestions, and you will naturally appear to be more confident if you follow each of these, as the article suggested.
So, how do you really improve your confidence?
First, it would be important to get to the root cause of your feelings. What is making you feel so uncomfortable in front of a prospective employer?
- Poor experience at your last place of work
- Length of time since your last interview
- Feel unqualified/inexperienced
- Lack of preparation
- Health issues
Sometimes, it can be more than one simultaneously! There is nothing wrong with feeling this way before taking such an important onward step in your professional career. But they shouldn’t be reasons to hold you back. That’s where we’ve refined our processes to help our candidates.
The next step would be to address the cause of your confidence issues, especially where it involves your previous role. This most recent experience will likely have shaped the way you approach a new team, role, environment and management structure. If you haven’t unpacked and processed those feelings, you may inadvertently impact your suitability for other positions.
At ACJ Search, we take the time to really get to know each of our customers, wherever you’re at in your career. We’ve partnered with a careers coach to help support your personal development and readiness to seek a new challenge BEFORE you make your applications.
When we put you forward for a role, we want to make sure that you are able to perform at your very best. We’ve really invested in our 90 day support program, and we’ve helped lots of hard working professionals become more confident and more successful.
If you would like to find out how our method could help you, drop me a DM or complete the form on our contact page and we can set up a call.
