The Psychology of your 20s - 430. The psychology of job interviews

Episode Date: June 18, 2026

When we go for a job interview, it can feel as if our entire existence is being judged. It can come down to the feeling of someone else getting to call the shots on whether we are intellectually competent at best, or personally desirable at worst. In this episode, we’ll explore why job interviews can feel so stressful, identify why positive first impressions are vital, and discuss some psychological hacks to help us nail them.  We explore: • How job interviews trigger our need for social approval • The Yerkes-Dodson Law, or how excessive pressure can make us perform worse• Why we can’t trust our judgement about how an interview went• Why being likeable makes it more likely you’ll get hired• How easy psychological tricks can make us feel more confident Our favourite sources: https://www.catharticspacecounseling.com/blog/how-to-handle-uncertainty-without-losing-your-mindwww.researchgate.net/publication/313878823_The_importance_of_first_impressions_in_a_job_interview https://www.psychologytoday.com/gb/blog/beyond-stress-and-burnout/202206/the-effects-of-stress-when-interviewing Watch on Netflix: HERE Follow Jemma on Instagram: @jemmasbeg Follow the podcast on Instagram: @thatpsychologypodcast Subscribe on Substack: @thepsychologyofyour20s For business: [e-mail] The Psychology of your 20s is not a substitute for professional mental health help. If you are struggling, distressed or require personalised advice, please reach out to your doctor or a licensed psychologist.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

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If you live in L.A., you already spend about 89% of your life in a car. So, we turned it into a podcast. On Do You Need a Ride, we pick up our comedian friends, drive around Los Angeles, and discuss what's happening in the world around us. Cars are very rude to bicyclists, but in this case, it's a bicyclist going out of his way to get in the way of traffic. All you did was roll your window down. He almost hit that.

It's like a talk show, but going 30 miles an hour. episodes every Monday on the Exactly Right Network. Listen to Do You Need a Ride on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Hello everybody. I'm Gemma Spake and welcome back to the psychology of your 20s, the podcast where we talk through the biggest changes, moments and transitions of our 20s and what they mean for our psychology. Hello everybody. Welcome back to the show. Welcome back to the podcast. It is so great to have you here back for another episode. as we, of course, break down the psychology of our 20s. You guys know the, like, the entire whole mission of this podcast is to bring, like, true research and science and studies to the experiences

that we go through in our 20s that are challenging, that are annoying, that are confusing. And the other day I had this realization, an epiphany, if you will, that we had never done one on job interviews, which is wild to me, because who hasn't had a lot? had a job interview on their 20s. It's actually a huge part of the job hunting process. And I also know how deeply psychological it is. And if you don't believe me that it is probably more psychological than anything, this episode is going to be a real shocker. We are talking about the three biggest psychological hurdles or reasons. Job interviews are so daunting. The psychology of first impressions and how to make a good first impression, according to the

research, how to fake confidence in a job interview in a way that doesn't seem insincere, and your guide to basically leveraging everything we know about the brain, personality, social psychology to show off your best self and hopefully get the job the next time you find yourself back on the job hunt. It is a big episode. I don't want to waste any more time on our intro. Let's get into the psychology of job interviews. So first things first, why do job interviews make us so nervous? I think it's three factors, kind of all combining at one critical moment. It's our need for social approval, for one, especially from somebody with authority.

It's our fear of being evaluated second. And finally, it's that doing well in this interview is going to determine other factors that are really important to us, like income, job security, even identity. Basically, the stakes are psychologically, emotionally, physically, very, very high. Let's talk about each of these kind of factors one by one and how they contribute to our nerves. Firstly, when we go for a job interview, it can feel as if our whole life, our whole personhood is being assessed and scrutinized in a way that is very unnatural. It's very nerve-wracking, particularly because it requires us to give up a lot of control and to be okay with someone perceiving us incorrectly on things that feel very important to us,

like our intelligence, like our personality, like our work ethic, like our likeability. We know that at the end of the day, first impressions are about 40% us, 60% the other person's attitude, experiences and beliefs. And this can tap into core wounds around the possibility of being judged or rejected or compared. It also makes us very aware of the social hierarchy that kind of surrounds us at all time, but it comes into focus very clearly all at once. This person can determine a lot about our future and our life because they have power, and in that moment, we don't. So it's not a very nice feeling.

This is only natural, I think, to have this sense of stress. In many ways, we rely on social approval to strengthen our identities. This is called self-verification theory. We want others to see us the way that we see ourselves. And in a job interview, that doesn't always feel easy to control. Part of our attempt to garner social approval includes practicing impression management, where we anticipate which behaviors will provoke which reactions in our social environment and we exhibit the behavior that seems to offer us the best social feedback.

That impression management instinct is like a thousand times more intense during a job interview, and therefore the mental load is more exhausting when you're in front of somebody who is in a position of power. The interviewer or the interviewees, like they have a direct say over whether you are hired or not. That creates a lot of social anxiety. I think what's more on a very fundamental level, like we really need a job. We need the money that it provides us. It's not just for fun, right? So when our future financial security is in the hands of this person or persons,

And it's in the hands of how we perform in this situation. It can feel extremely helpless if things start to get away from us. Even if it's not the money, but it's the desire for a new challenge or a more fulfilling workplace, even if it's not about finances, there is part of us that wants to do well and that wants to be fulfilled because we're going for this job for some reason, for whatever reason. Getting the job is also deeply tied to our self-confidence, our self-esteem. when we place our self-belief and our confidence in external things, which is only natural, by the way,

if they go wrong, if this job interview goes wrong, it's harder to recover from that. The unfortunate thing is when we're under pressure and know that our performance is being evaluated, we often are more likely to perform worse, more likely to stumble, say the wrong thing, answer questions in a way we don't want to. this doesn't just relate to job interview performance alone. There are countless examples of this. You know, for example, sports people, musicians, TV presenters who choke at the last minute, even when they're doing something that they've done a thousand times because of the pressure and the counterintuitive influence of wanting to do well. We think wanting to do well makes us perform better.

It actually makes us perform worse when it gets to a point of, almost being overwhelming. There is psychological evidence for this reaction as well. A study from 2001 split 60 undergraduate students into two groups. Both groups were asked to complete a golf putting task that they'd already practiced. One group were put under the low pressure condition. They were basically just told to have fun, to like complete the task normally. The other group was told that their performance would be evaluated. They were offered a fine, financial incentive for doing well. And in some versions of this experiment, they were even told that, you know, their result was going to affect their friends and was going to affect the person they were

partnered up with. So that added some social pressure. Probably not going to surprise you here. The group who operated under the high pressure conditions, which mimicked a lot of the conditions of a job interview, performed significantly worse. Their accuracy dropped. And interestingly, the decline in ability was most significant in those who had previously been the more skilled of the group. Under pressure, the participants began to over-monitor their movements. They began to consciously control a skill which they'd practiced that should have been automatic. The participants who treated the golf putting exercise like it was no big deal, treated it like it was just fun, or enjoyable or a challenge or exciting, their performance flowed easier.

So why? Despite all of this, despite the importance of this moment, does it feel like we enter those moments where we choke? We're in this interview, we really want to do well. Why does it feel like our brain works against us when this thing is so important to us? Here is what we need to know. Stress and pressure are two distinct things. pressure refers to the external challenge and the demands that require our abilities. Stress, on the other hand, is our psychological and physiological response to this pressure. Pressure alone is neither good or bad. The stress response is what turns it into something that either aids us or doesn't.

When we're under pressure, the human brain releases hormones like cortisol and adrenaline, which prepare our body for a fight or flight response so that we are alert. our pupils are dilated, our reflexes are on edge, our hearing is better, our heart is ready for a quick getaway or quick movement. When our brain releases these hormones in moderate amounts, that's a great thing. We can improve our memory. We can enhance our problem solving skills. We feel more focused, almost like in a flow state. It's like an electric feeling, and that's when we often perform really, really well. However, when the pressure is sustained for a prolonged period of time or is too much, or our stress response

towards our pressure is too much, cortisol can actively impair the functioning of our prefrontal cortex, meaning our decision-making tanks. This is known as the Yerkes-Doddson law. The Yerks-Doddson law was first coined in the 1900s in this study that basically states that our performance improves with slight stress, but only up to a certain level, before there is a ceiling, and we crumble. So going into this job interview, your senses are heightened. Your problem solving skills might improve as you feel the pressure kind of rise. We are doing really well, we're flowing well, but once it tips, we can't keep up and our performance to clients and we start to get really anxious and nervous. Afterwards, it can be really really

rough to think like, my God, we might have, we could have done better. Like, it's very easy to ruminate on all our incorrect answers and our delays and our anxiety. But you have to realize that the stress of the situation gets the better of us. The Yerkes-Dodson law applies to everyone. It is a law for all humanity, even the most practiced athletes, public speakers, actors, doctors, you name it, experience this when expectation for ourselves in the situation becomes unmanageable. Listen, it's normal to ruminate after a job interview, especially because you are likely having to wait for an answer, and that waiting can sometimes be more uncomfortable than the interview itself. Psychology tells us that operating in a state of uncertainty is actually one of the

most psychologically stressful things we can experience, including when waiting for the answer from a big interview. Studies show that we may even prefer a negative outcome over the uncertainty of not knowing. That is how much we prefer predictability. We would rather find out that we didn't get it than wait a little bit longer to hear if we did. But you also can't always trust the thoughts that emerge during this waiting period, particularly our negative thoughts that would like to convince you that this all went terribly in order to provide a sense of closure. Basically, the truth is your brain is looking for any kind of answer. And if it can tell you, this went bad, the closure of that is going to make you feel good, even if it's not accurate.

Studies show it's probably not. One particular study from 1984 conducted experiments on participants related to their social judgments. Basically, do they know, can they accurately assess themselves? To do this, they had people score their own performance and aspects of their life that they thought they were doing well in or not. What they noticed is that when they asked participants how they came to these conclusions, like, am I happy, am I doing well, did I do well in this situation or no, their judgments don't actually tap into explicit evidence. Instead, they wrote that it's often the case that the

judgment is developed at the time the question is asked based on how they're feeling in that moment. So if you've just finished a stressful job interview or you're waiting for an email or a call back, the anticipation of that probably is impacting your mood so that your self-assessment of your performance seems worse than it actually was. That self-assessment is based on your mood. And your mood is probably not going to be the greatest in the aftermath of a job interview where you were being socially assessed. Even if you don't realize it, like maybe you're running on adrenaline, maybe like you're anxious, it's so much easier for you to think I did so terribly in that moment. I'm just asking you to maybe think that maybe that's not the case. Okay, we're going

to take a short break here, but when we return, let's talk about what you certainly can do to be better in your job interviews and some tips for managing, confidence, nerves, all those things. Stay with us. Pride is like love. You feel it in your heart. IR. Radio, Canada's number one streaming app for radio and podcasts, including IHart Pride Canada, your favorite hits and must have party bangers, plus personalized and curated playlists like back in the day pride. Come together, celebrate love. Take pride with you anytime, anywhere. Just ask your smart speaker to play IHartPride Canada.

Stream us on your phone. Listen now at iHeartRadio.ca. In the moment, it felt like it was going on forever. I didn't think I was going to live. terrified. There was no anything inside those eyes. They turned black.

It scared the hell out of me. That was your first murder case? Yes, sir. Fear to say this was the biggest case of your career? Yes, sir. Rape a murder for a child. Just as bad as it gets. I would think so.

People wake up. I'm the one that saw the murder take place by Crevent and DePippo. Anthony DePippo showed no signs of remorse, appearing unfazed after being sentenced to the maximum. I said I'm not guilty. I'll take it to the grief. Listen to the devil's quarry on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear the Devil's Quarry ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to Lobif for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Together, we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world. most fascinating people. Like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer. And that was more difficult.

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Listen to learning to be human on IHard Radio, Apple Podcasts Or wherever you get your podcast Mainstream media is full of cruel depictions of the unhoused, stories that shame and blame and paint the unhoused as a monolith. We The Un-House is the podcast that's changing that. I'm Theo Henderson, creator and host, and for years I've created a space where the unhoused and their advocates can tell their own stories. In the last few months alone, I've interviewed Un-House parents, immigrants, mutual aid organizers, veterans, the LGBTQTIA plus community, and the policymakers who make the laws that impact the unhoused existence.

Wheatian Houses a two-time Webby and Signal Award-winning show with many exciting guests on the horizon. Tune in this week for my interview with Dr. Gio Wichor, a street doctor turned influencer whose work with the unhoused community has made a huge impact online and in her community. Listen to Wheatley-House on the I-Hard Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcast. So according to social psychology research, what impresses people in job interviews?

Let's look at that. Besides the basic stuff, besides qualifications, competence, past experience, what do people actually care about? I want to talk specifically about the role of first impressions and the role of confidence

and how important those are in job interviews. It's not going to surprise anybody. First impressions are one of the most significant factors that influence the outcome of a job interview. In fact, the research on it is pretty wild, like pretty insane when you really get into it. A person will decide if they like you within five seconds of meeting you. In fact, there was a study from 2000 that had a group of participants observe an initial greeting between two interviewers and a candidate at the start of 59 different job interviews.

Then the participants left. They didn't get to watch any more of the interview. And the experimenters got the interviewers afterwards to basically be like, would you hire this person? Now, this was a fake job interview, but they were like, based on what you saw, professional skills, behavior, what do you think? Based upon these evaluations also, fake or not, who do you think would get the job?

Now, that first group of participants who were only shown a tiny portion of the interview, you from the knock on the door to five seconds after the candidate sat down, they were able to accurately determine whether or not the person they saw got the job or not with extreme accuracy. Like extreme accuracy. What's incredible is that they got everything they needed to know about how this person would be assessed or whether they would be a good camera. or whether they would get the job from such a brief, brief snippet of time.

What the study is really suggesting is that, particularly in a job interview setting, a hiring manager's assessment of an applicant's skills, knowledge, ability, or just how much they actually like this person, might be fixed as early as that initial greeting between the interviewers and the candidate. how you hold yourself in those first few moments may just be the most important part of the entire conversation. However, what this study might also say is, and what it might reveal, is how biases cause people to make immediate decisions, but not necessarily the best decisions. As much as first impressions matter, research has also revealed that they may actually present

a very critical limitation to how humans process information and assess others because they, A, present a confirmation bias, and B, are often based on how familiar or similar people seem to us or similar to somebody that we know or similar to our version or idea of what a good candidate is rather than who would actually make the best candidate. It's not based on us, it's based on them, it's based on the interviewer. Why is that? Why do we unfairly rely on first impressions and the false information they may or may not provide? It's because we're social animals, right? And even in a professional setting, even when we know we shouldn't do it, we want to get a read on someone rather quickly in order to rapidly anticipate what to expect from them. The thing is, we don't understand our biases in that situation. We based these first impressions on really small things like micro-body language signals, posture, the positions of somebody's mouth, their scent, how quickly or slowly they move, eye contact, tone, and of course general physical appearance, attractiveness, race, body composition.

This means that even if you do well in all other ways, sometimes someone unfairly only sees you as they want to see you from the very beginning. However, I don't want us to despair too much on that. We can manipulate this in a job interview by getting what is really at the core of somebody's first impressions and what they're actually looking for. What they are looking for from a psychological perspective is familiarity and they're looking for self-assurance. Familiarity can be displayed through warmth, coming in with an openness, a friendliness, making eye contact, having a slight smile that says, you know, hey, I'm not a threat,

you like me, I can be one of you. A study from 1981 found that the more emotionally expressed of somebody is through the use of non-verbal modes of communication, the more likely they are to be perceived as appealing, attractive, familiar. Other key things to remember, if this is applicable, do some research on what people likely wear day to day at the company and dress like you are already an employee. Once again, you look familiar. ignores, I already know this person, this person and I could already get along. When it comes to job

interviews, the person assessing you is basically wondering, would I want to sit next to this person for eight hours? Do I feel like I could potentially build psychological and social trust with this person? Do we already have a baseline of understanding? Do I think there being at this job, it's going to benefit me? Small talk in these situations also really, really helpful, just being chatty, does wonders, because, again, it gives these people more about you to be familiar with and to feel like they know you. Also shows the importance of having diverse hiring panels, I will say, because one interviewer, just one person's prejudice can spoil everything. I think that's a really critical thing to take from this research.

Next is self-assurance or confidence, even the fake kind. This is really important in job interviews because research shows that as much as people rely on their own so-called instinct. They also rely on this implicit belief that we obviously know ourselves better than them. So they are inclined to trust how we present ourselves as accurate. Basically, if you don't feel confident or you don't think you know what you're doing, fake it. And it's very likely they won't be able to tell the difference. This actually comes from research on dating, which shows that dating profiles that have no pictures but are confidently written will always do better and make an individual seem more likable because we trust that this person, once again,

has a reason for that confidence that we can't see yet. We trust they have an accurate assessment of themselves. Walking into a room thinking, I know these people are going to like me. I know I'm a good fit for this job. I know who I am. I know what I'm about. I know I'm talented. I know I like myself, that expands outwards through small unconscious things. You may not even know you're doing that are interpreted by the interviewers as self-assurance and help form their vital first impression. With that in mind, I also think a great tip for perfecting a job interview is having a bit of a mindfulness confidence exercise that gets you into the mind frame of, I'm going to do well here,

I'm going to be confident every single time. This is what we call an emotional anchor or an emotional North Star. Basically, it's self-regulation. If you have something that you do every time that triggers a certain state of mind for you, that is amazing. Breathing exercise, the 4-4-4 is a classic. Watching a YouTube video that gets you in the zone is also a great strategy that is always going to be there and you can grasp onto it and it can make you feel better.

I have a friend who watches Olympic finals before she, enters into job interviews. Call it a placebo effect, if you will. She tells me that it helps her do better. It could be a song. It could be a routine you have before every interview. I have another friend who, and I love this one, she pictures all the most likable and charismatic people that she's ever met and visualizes shaking their hands before she goes into an interview. It could be the Golden Orb method, which we talk about on the podcast all the time, where you imagine, like with every breath in and out, you're feeding this golden orb that is coming from your chest and as it gets larger, it surrounds everyone around you with an infectious energy that makes them like you,

like, and draws them into you. It's like this, this charisma bubble. Whatever it is, these rituals, they leverage that emotional anchoring effect. They also leverage perceived control. This is the concept that was labored by a man called Julian Rotter in the 60s, and he basically said, anything we can do that makes us feel like we have control over a situation that we probably have very little control over or over our destiny, anything that makes us feel like, you know, we have a say will improve performance such as exercises like this, whether they work or not. It really doesn't matter if it's placebo if it is helping you emotionally regulate so that you're able to go in with better emotional strategies and greater confidence to perform at the level

you want to. Second, when it comes to the debate, is it better to under or overprepare? Always overprepure. There's this guy he's named Nicholas Rulin. He's the author of the book, I think it's literally called the Psychology of Job Interviews. And he said that sometimes when we are interviewed for a job, we treat it like it's a police interview and we treat it like we've done something wrong and it's their job to find out what. We feel like we are being in interrogated by the interviewer, and they want to find evidence of problems with our past, evidence of why we wouldn't be capable. Like in that situation, the interviewer is the powerholder, and we're kind of hoping that

they're not going to punish us. They're not going to discover something bad about us. So we almost feel like we enter needing to get our story straight when actually we should be preparing to find out what we need to know about them, their culture, their recent history, their objectives, their workplace environment, recent moments, recent decisions that their company has made, whatever it is. Rulin, that same author, also notes that, on the other hand, some people underprepure in job interviews because they think it's going to be very casual and they think that

over-preparing jinx as things or, you know, gets certain answers to set in stone. And we also feel like we're going to be let down. This means that they're less likely to convey true qualifications that they have. They're more likely to come off as a little bit relaxed, a little bit flippant. It might not be clear that they actually want the job, that they actually are in it. What's important is that most interviews sit somewhere in between, right? You're not being interrogated, but also this isn't a casual affair. Knowing that it's going to sit somewhere in the middle helps you prepare.

firstly you need to realize that nobody is out to get you, especially not in a job interview. Like it's serious, but it's not that serious. I think just being in the room in the first place is a sign that you've already impressed them, right? I always think this before I go into a job interview. They wouldn't waste their time if they didn't seriously think you were a good fit. Like if that first stage, they've already seen something they like about you, they're not going to waste their time. Now show them what needs to be known about you. Now show them the greater depth and now it's your turn to learn about them. Make it clear you know what the company actually does. Research exactly what someone in your role would be doing. Say what I expect to be doing. Say it out

loud. Like I expect I'll be doing lots of this. Give examples of when you've done stuff like that in the past. Consume the content that the company has made that they're putting out on their LinkedIn, on their Instagram. Get a sense of the people who, who, makes decisions, how has it grown over time? I think what's more by researching the company and coming up with a set of kind of conversational narratives that align with what they're looking for. You can also situate yourself in the interview in a way that is chatty and confident, which we already know is important, but conveys you've planned for this, that like you know what you're talking about. Speaking of planning, if there is one question, they are definitely

going to ask you in every single job interview, it is, tell me a little bit about yourself. You need your answer to that question to be tight, to be distinct, to be under two minutes. And luckily for you, there is a little bit of a formula. Firstly, talk about education. When did you go to school? Then the two jobs you worked before the one you currently had all your most previous job, just mention them by name and by title, then go in depth on your most recent experience, including how long you've been there, highlight two major things you did in that role that you're

proud of and that you're capable of, then where you see yourself going now and why that future vision aligns with this job. Also, what you're interested in outside of work. Once again, for that familiarity. That is literally the equation. Practice that to death. This is also one of the easiest ways to ease your nerves because you know they're going to ask you that question. And if you have your answer ready to go, you're going to nail it. First question, out of the gate, you're going to do great. When my boyfriend was applying for jobs at the start of the year, I made him rehearse that. So many times, I'm sure he got sick of me asking, but I think it helped.

He's not here to confirm or deny. I think it helped because he had that question, like, ready to go. Okay, we need to take one more short break here, but I promise I have more psychological tips for your upcoming job interview when we come right back. You have the desire to help to make a real difference? The College of the City you offer the program Dependence and Scenti Mental.

Acqueray the competences essential for accompanying and to support the people confronted to and defy for a career enriching to service of the community

francophone of all the country. Don't know of the quality in French, it's possible with the CET. Visit Collage LACC.A. right now. An initiative

of the consortium national of formation in health Souttened by Sante Canada. In the moment, it felt like it was going on forever. I didn't think I was going to live. I was terrified. There was no anything inside those eyes.

They turned black. It scared the hell out of me. That was your first murder case? Yes, sir. Fear to say this was the biggest case of your career? Yes, sir. Rape a murder for a child. Just as bad as it gets.

I would think so. People wake up. and saw the murder take place by Creveit and DePippo. Anthony DePippo showed no signs of remorse, appearing unfazed after being sentenced to the maximum. I said, I'm not guilty. I'll take it to the grief. Listen to the devil's quarry on the Iheart radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts.

And to hear the Devil's Quarry ad free with exclusive content, subscribe to LaVa for Good Plus on Apple Podcasts. Hey, I'm Hoda Kotby, host of the podcast, Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby. Together, we're going to have meaningful conversations with the world's most fascinating people. Like when actress Olivia Munn shared how she overcame fierce health challenges. I've gone through breast cancer and then helped my mother through breast cancer, and that was more difficult. There's a lot of people who understand postpartner depression. I was not prepared for postpartum anxiety.

Listen to Joy 101 with Hoda Kotby on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. And it's a ton of excitement because their new star is J. Chittarito

Hernandez. Everyone sees me as a football player but before anything else I'm human. Every single

day I'm still learning how to live with problems, mistakes, relationships, emotions ever since I was born.

And I still have so many questions. Where do we come from? What happens after death? How do you

deal with cancellation? Cristiano or Messi? Do aliens exist? What is love? Real Madrid or Varsa?

From every day an ordinary to the deep and extraordinary. This isn't a normal podcast. Everything here is spontaneous, real, and genuine. This podcast is like a deep talk with your closest friends, where vulnerability comes out. Conspiracy theories end up on the table, and goals and lessons are shared.

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Okay, we talked about the importance of having an emotional anchor before the interview, but research also shows that people who pause before answering questions or have an anchor in the moment, sometimes called a power pause, by the way. people who have that notion to take a couple of seconds to give a considered response come off as more prepared, more calm, and they answer questions better. They also use fewer filler words like, um, like, I guess, those kind of things. There has been some research, I will say, that suggests answering immediately and quickly and just like getting, just saying something immediately makes you seem more truthful. there was one 2021 study that was like, oh, maybe if you answer quicker, people are going to like you more because you seem more honest. But they were talking about pauses up to 10 seconds.

Like if you take 10 seconds to answer a question, that might be a little bit much. Two seconds, though, is not a lot. And two seconds is a lot for your brain, though, right? Two seconds doesn't seem like a lot for the interviewer. For you, you're going to have thousands of thoughts subconsciously in that two seconds. and allowing yourself a little bit more time to sort through them subconsciously means that collecting your thoughts, thinking about it, just having a quick plan of how you're going to answer means you're going to come off better.

You're not going to panic and say something that you don't mean just to fill the space. You're not going to say something you just think the interviewer wants to hear. You're going to really be considered. And you're going to also show personally by pausing a kind of emotional restraint and a caution and a care that people probably want in somebody that they're hiring. You're not just showing that you are good at answering interview questions. You're showing that if you were to get the job, whatever situation you're going to be in, you are going to have a considered approach.

You're going to have that pause, think clearly, strategize mentality. So power pause is such like a girl boss, like boss babe title, like name for something. but think of it as just like that emotional anchor you have before you go into the job interview. It is your moment to kind of come back into yourself and really think how are we going to put our best foot forward here and actually convey what we want to convey rather than just what our anxiety wants us to convey. Okay, let's get into some rapid fire tips for you to finish off this episode just to leave you feeling prepared for what you've got. coming up, things that like, just very quick, you can apply, hopefully, instantly if you need it. Number one, before you go into a job interview, loosen every single muscle in your face and then raise them again and smile. This is a physiological tip that people swear by. Why does it work? Because

your body and your brain are in constant communication. When we're anxious, the muscles in our face tighten almost automatically, especially around your jaw, around your forehead, around your eyes, and around your mouth. Your nervous system interprets that tension as evidence that something is wrong and that can instantly intensify feelings of stress and threat. By consciously interrupting that, relieving those muscles, you interrupt that feedback loop. Smiling also has a fascinating psychological effect known as the facial feedback hypothesis. This is the idea that our facial expressions don't just reflect emotions. They can also influence. They can also influence emotions. So if you ever heard the thing, if you're sad, just smile for 10 seconds,

it will make you happy. It's actually true. Even a forced smile can reduce your stress response and signal safety to your brain. Number two, refer to people by name occasionally throughout the interview, especially when answering their specific questions. Firstly, this shows that you're speaking to them, you've remembered them, you know they're important. Secondly, there was a 2006 study that found a lot of evidence that hearing one's own name has unique brain functioning activation, including in areas responsible for directing our attention. So basically, they're going to pay more attention to whatever you're saying. Finally, I think it creates more of a sense of dialogue and a back-and-forth type atmosphere,

particularly during parts of an interview that can feel quite monologue heavy, like when you're answering long questions, when you're being asked to solve a a problem. Like, it can feel like it's very you and they can kind of tune out. People like to feel considered they like to feel seen. Using somebody's name is like the easiest way to do so and to grab their attention back so that they're not thinking about the next interview, thinking about the last interview, thinking about all the other stuff they have to do with their job. It makes them feel like, oh, this person knows my name. Again, that familiarity. Firstly, they've paid attention to me. I feel respected. I feel noticed as the interviewer, but also if they know my name, we must be on like a friendlier kind of basis, which kind of tricks them psychologically into liking you more.

Finally, have one to two questions prepared that you actually want the answers to that are also a little bit less obvious. Hopefully you're already doing this, but if not, having those questions and not just boring questions like questions that you just, you genuinely care about signifies a willingness to engage with the job and the company long term. And it shows deliberate planning in advance that you think that you're going to get this job and you think you're, like, you're really considering how you're going to fit in importantly and significantly. Think about what you actually want to know, though. Again, I keep expressing this, but if you just ask questions you think you're useful or like you think you're going to impress them, that you actually don't know the answers to, like it doesn't come off as very authentic.

Ask things that once again you have genuinely been curious about, things that they genuinely would want to give you a good answer to. Here are some examples. Perhaps you'd like to know how much you can progress in the future, how flexible the working hours are, what opportunities they have for volunteering, employee engagement, personal development, something more lighthearted, like, what do you guys do for your company party? Maybe not that question, but like something that's just figure out what's something that they are not advertising or haven't made clear that you are really interested in

knowing that's going to inform your decision about their job. I also want you to remember job interviews like any other skill require a level of practice. Like the job market is incredibly tough right now, particularly for people in their 20s entering the workforce or in like their early stages. Even if you don't get this job, even if you do screw up, the practice is invaluable in itself and it's just another chance to try out your skills. Try mastering that first impression exercise, that two minute, who am I pitch. Try and be kind to yourself and remember that like every single person gets rejected. Sometimes there is protection in rejection. And And getting rejected is better than not applying, not putting yourself out there, not putting

yourself on their radar. Behind every job interview that didn't go the way you want it to is another interesting job or another interesting opportunity just around the corner that maybe now you're available for. One more thing, I know I said one more thing, but definitely one more thing. Even if you don't get the job from this interview, it doesn't mean the door is closed forever with that company. you're on their radar right now.

I've had friends who got jobs six months later from interviews that didn't land them the job that they actually went for. I've had people I know get other bigger opportunities from job interviews they thought they failed and tanked. Literally my friend Noah got a job at Apple five months after her interview for an entirely different role. Last week, like last week she signed this contract because you never know. And I do truly believe that things never happen the way that you predict them happening, including job interviews, including the job hunt. It's a good reminder to just like not count yourself out and to not burn bridges just because perhaps you weren't successful the first time.

Obviously, job interviews are important. But there are other things that do go into somebody's like assessment. And so at the end of the day, you could have an amazing job interview. You could have really impressed them. And somebody just had one more years' experience. Somebody just happened to know somebody in the company. So as much as you're putting a lot of effort into this, as much as you want to be prepared, we also know, as we said before, the greater the expectations, the greater the pressure,

the more you are likely to feel overwhelmed by the stress. So this may be ridiculous advice. You can take it or leave it. I know it's going to sound, it's going to sound ridiculous, but treat job interviews as something that is meant to be fun and is something that is meant to be your chance to grow as an individual. There is nothing on the other side of the job interview. Your only, I don't want to say job again,

but your only role in going into that encounter is to learn more about the other person, to learn more about this company, to test out your skills, to test out how you perform, whether the job on the other end is yours or not, having that kind of, I'm here to experience, I'm here to learn, I'm here to just see what I can do, see what I'm capable of, is a better mentality overall for reducing the sense of expectation that could actually end up subtly sabotaging how you perform. So those are all the tips I have for you today. I'm very hopeful for you. Good luck. I think that you're going to do amazing. Listen, nobody likes job

interviews. Like, they're awful. They suck. Like, nobody likes sitting in front of somebody and being assessed for, like, everything that is important to you in, like, an hour. So if it's not going well, if you've had a shit job interview in recent history, it's all right. Like, it's just part of life. It's like taxes. It's like death. Job interviews just kind of suck. But I hope that these tips in understanding the psychology behind why you are so apprehensive, behind first impressions, behind confidence, behind impression management is useful in whatever you're doing. If you have made it this far and you are listening on Spotify, leave a comment down below. Are you about to go into a job interview? Have you got a job interview going up? What's the job for? What do you, what kind of opportunities are you currently exploring?

Let's all leave a little comment so we can wish you. good luck on your quest. I'm sure you're going to do amazing. As always, you can watch full episodes of the podcast now on Netflix if you haven't done so yet. You can also follow us on Instagram at That Psychology podcast. I think I'm going to make a Substack article about this as well. I think it would be an interesting one. So follow us on Substack. If you want to read these tips, save these tips, look at them later on in a different format. I think that's everything I have time for. But again, thank you for listening all the way to the end. Until next time, be safe, be kind, be gentle to yourself.

Good luck with your job interview. I'm sure you're going to do absolutely, absolutely killer. You're going to kill it. We'll talk very, very soon. There was no anything inside those eyes. They turned black. It scared the hell out of me. Evil, wake up.

I'm the one that saw the murder take place by Crevette and DePippo. Anthony DePippo showed no signs of remorse. unfazed after being sentenced to the maximum. I said, I'm not guilty. I'll take it to the grief. Listen to the devil's quarry in the Bone Valley Feed on the IHeart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you get your podcasts. Joy is essential and it's also elusive, but now there's a new and exciting way to start your journey toward a more joyful existence. Joy 101. It's a new podcast hosted by

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