Job interview stress. Interview host experience

Job seekers are in awe at the mention of a stressful job interview. And for good reason. If you are already "lucky" to get on it, you will remember this experience for a long time. If not already, the expectation of such a “happy” opportunity is probably already driving you into stress.

Stress interviews are used by recruiters for several purposes:

• Understand what exactly is a stressful situation for you;
• Assess how you behave in a stressful situation;
• Determine what is a conflict for you and how you manifest yourself in it;
• Assess your reaction to a non-standard situation and your chosen model of behavior in it.

You are at risk if

• Your job is connected with communication with clients (employees call centers, sales departments, technical support, complaints department, etc.);
• You are a representative of “helping” professions (psychologists, medical professionals, etc.);
• Your work involves great responsibility and requires resistance to stress (managers, secretaries, employees of the Ministry of Emergencies, etc.).

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If your job does not involve constant stressful situations, but you are being interviewed under stress, this is a reason to think. Here or in the whole company, stress is an obligatory attribute of office life, or your potential leader has a "heavy" character. Is this work worth the effort spent on getting it?

A stressful interview is built around:

• Creating stressful / non-standard situation;
• Using personal, stupid, strange questions to the candidate.

Examples of elements of a stress interview:

• Long wait.

  If you are expecting an interview, which for some unknown reason has already been postponed several times "for literally another 10 minutes", firstly, indicate to the secretary or recruiter that you are limited in time, and secondly, do something useful.

  You are being tested for patience.

  If you are applying for a leadership position, you can ask about the reasons for the delay in your meeting, and also say that you are ready to wait another 10 minutes, after which you will leave, since you have an appointment. Most likely, after these 10 minutes you will be invited.

• Endless questionnaires and tests.

  Need to fill out a bunch of questionnaires and tests?

  You are checked for adherence to the company's formal procedures, your patience and your attitude to routine work is assessed.

  Fill in. Be sure to check if there are any time limits. For example, certain tests are given only 10 minutes to complete. Check this in advance.

• Rudeness and rudeness in the behavior of a recruiter.

  They don't listen to you, interrupt, go about their business during the interview, communicate with a colleague at the same time, sarcastically comment on or distort everything you said.

  You are tested for conflict and stress resistance.

  Try to grab the recruiter's attention. Answer the substance of the question, not the tone of his statements. Keep calm. If you get interrupted, come back to the answer to this question later.

• Uncomfortable interview conditions.

  You are not asked to sit, you are sitting too close / far from the recruiter in the interview room, which is smoky, noisy, dark, etc.

  If you cannot communicate in such conditions, tell the recruiter about it. Ask for a chair, turn on additional lighting, etc.

• An artificially created stressful situation.

  A broken leg of a chair from which you safely fell, or a glass of water "accidentally" thrown over you, or the unexpected appearance of screaming clients.

  You are tested for stress resistance and behavior in non-standard situations.

  Ask new chair, tidy yourself up, wait for the "clients" to run out of complaints, and continue the interview.

• Personal questions for the applicant.

  You are asked personal questions that have nothing to do with work, comments on your age, marital status, features of appearance, etc.

  You are tested for conflict and the ability to behave in a stressful situation.

  Here it is best to laugh it off or translate the recruiter's comments into positive ones for future work.

An example of stressful questions about personal topics:

• Are you 25 years old and not married yet? What's wrong with you?
• Here I am looking at you. Are you, by any chance, pregnant?
• You look bad. What are you being treated for? What are you sick with?
• Divorced? Don't know how to build relationships?
• Why didn't you serve in the army? Don't want to defend your homeland?

So how do you get through a stressful job interview?

Basic rule:

"Calm, only calm!"

Other rules:

• A stressful interview is role-playing game... The recruiter has nothing against you personally.
• Don't fall for provocations. Stay calm and friendly.
• In no case do not "get personal" when communicating with a recruiter. Communicate in a professional field.
• Don't be afraid to say no. Your personal life has nothing to do with work, and you are not going to discuss it.
• If you think the recruiter has gone overboard, end the interview and walk away.

The main thing - remember: not only a company chooses an employee, but an employee also chooses a company! If, after the stress of the interview, you are not apologized for such a non-standard interview, you should think twice about working for such a company. After all, the attitude towards employees is already evident in the interview.

If a job seeker is insulted, shouted at, or overlooked at the interview, he may have ended up in a stress interview. Natalya Chailytko, director of the Status Personnel Center, tells about when this method is really justified when hiring and how to create a stressful situation correctly.

- I have been studying the topic of stress interviews for over 15 years and have been doing them for about 11 years. During this time, I got my own opinion on how to carry it out, what rules must be followed and in what cases it is prohibited to carry it out. I will share my experience.

When to conduct a stress interview

I treat stress interviews with great care. In no case should you conduct it without having experience in this. A poorly conducted stress interview can seriously harm the applicant. At the very least, this can lead to a decrease in his self-esteem.

In my practice, there have been cases when a job seeker fell into depression, refused to look for a job, because he was afraid that he would have to experience serious stress again.

But even if I know how to conduct stress interviews, I recommend doing so only if necessary qualities cannot be verified by any other method.

If the manager insists on either another way to check the candidate you do not see, then I will give several recommendations.

3 rules for conducting stress interviews

1. A stress interview is effective if it lasts 10–20% of the interview time, and not during the entire interview.

2. A stressful situation should be selected based on:

• Vacancies. Employees different professions experience stress from different situations. For example, an accountant can be checked for stress resistance to revisions, a sales manager - for conflicting behavior of clients, project managers for timely completion of a project, etc.
• The candidate's temperament. For example, accelerating the rate of speech, communicating with several people at the same time is not a stressful situation for a person with a choleric temperament.
• The type of perception of the candidate's information (auditory, visual, kinesthetic). Kinesthetic can be put in an uncomfortable chair, audial can be interrupted, visual can be interrupted by "random" people passing by

3. A stressful situation cannot be created at the first interview. You can only get to know the applicant when you have already held one, or better, two meetings. And only then choose the right technique.

How to create a stressful situation

There are many standard methods of creating a stressful situation. For example:

• The interviewer invites the applicant to sit in an uncomfortable chair
• Forces to fill out the questionnaire "on the knee"
• Asks "head-on" why the applicant came, announcing that he is not suitable for their company
• Shines a bright lamp in your eyes
• Ignores the applicant's answers using a monologue form, preventing the candidate from responding to questions asked
• Affects family or intimate matters
• Interviews are constantly interrupted by people who "accidentally"

And now - a few examples from practice.

An example of a method for a kinesthetic. The head of the furniture showroom was looking for employees for various vacancies - account managers, furniture designers, accountants. He used one method for all of them. He bought a chair - with a hard seat of intertwined metal rods, high back from metal twisted drills. He put it in his office and invited the candidates to sit down.

In the middle of the interview, they were told a legend - supposedly in the company long time worked a man who died in the workplace. This chair was his favorite. After death, his ghost comes to the office to sit on this chair.

Can you imagine the state of a candidate who has already sat on this uncomfortable chair for 15 minutes, felt all its features and then he was told this? Only highly stress-tolerant candidates do not jump or run away.

So the head of the company revealed the motivation of the candidate - whether he wants to become an employee of the company after such a test. The result was known either immediately or the next day.

It has been like this for 7 years, with the help of a "beloved" metal chair in the office of this company, candidates are tested for stress resistance ...

An example of a method for visuals. These are people who communicate little and work a lot with documents - personnel officers, an accounting officer, designers, lawyers.

For the interview, the candidate is asked to bring a photo from his personal archive - in which he is with his children, spouse, and parents. In the middle of the interview, when more than one technique has already been used, it is proposed to cut the photo, thereby “dividing” the people in the photo (the cut can be between people, at eye level, “cutting off” the legs ...). The cutting line is always specified.

To this unusual request, the candidate almost always experiences severe stress - he thinks that if he cuts the photo now, he will either get divorced or lose his child, parent.

Here with the naked eye you can see the motivation: is the candidate really capable of anything in the future for the sake of this company?

An example of conducting stress interviews for audiences. As a rule, these are sales managers, account managers, HR and PR managers, etc.

At the first interview, the interviewer "takes" the candidate into the past: he asks to remember with what words his mother scolded him, or a teacher at school, or former boss... This is how the interviewer collects a package of phrases that represent a stressful situation for the candidate. For example, these can be phrases:

• "Well, what the fuck are you a businessman?"
• "You are nobody and there is no way to call you"
• "Anyone else is better than you"
• "You are zero without a stick"
• "Well, how long can I suffer with you?"

And during stress interviews, a similar phrase appears in turn. For example, it is pronounced by an accidental employee or a manager tells stories about already dismissed employees using these phrases.

And yet: not a single, even the most competent stress interview will give a 100% result of how a person will behave at work. It is one thing to test a candidate by immersing him in stressful situations, and another to a real work environment.

Checking candidates for a vacant position is a serious ritual for which interviewers prepare with the utmost care. They develop new types of tests for applicants, invent tricky questions. Large-scale work is underway to find vulnerabilities and "boiling points". For a number of professions, it is important not only to be an excellent specialist, but also to be able to withstand constant pressure, especially psychological pressure. Stress interviews are used to select such candidates.

Who is at risk?

This type helps not only to find out the professionalism of a person, but also to assess how a particular applicant approaches the performance of duties. The stress test allows you to simulate the behavior of the applicant in a non-standard situation. In most cases, it is used when checking a limited list of professions. Among the "lucky ones":

• banking workers,
• sales workers,
• advertising and customer service managers,
• insurance agents,
• PR specialists,
• psychologists,
• reporters, journalists and presenters (announcers) of the live broadcast,
• executives, executives and office managers,
• service workers.

A wide range of job seekers are subjected to stress tests. They can be both ordinary employees and top managers. For the former, the test is carried out to determine the degree of resistance to stress, loyalty, not conflict. For the second - to identify the ability to lead and accept correct decisions in a non-standard and nervous atmosphere.

For fruitful activity, you must have both professional knowledge and personal qualities that will allow you to diplomatically resolve "acute" situations. No resume can fully capture this ability. A personal meeting is the only way out. In such cases, a special type of interview comes to the rescue - stressful.

What should you expect during your interview?

The interviewers always have a new trick in their stock, and they also do not mind using the tools tested over the years. Just about them will be discussed. Sophisticated methods help to assess the endurance and resilience of a person to a stressful situation. Many job seekers who have never faced such treatment in an interview become stupid, lost, or angry. This is not good, the interview ends up rejecting their candidacy.

Among the many common techniques recruiters prefer to use, there are eight of the most popular. Very often they are introduced into the process for express verification. Some techniques are used individually, others are skillfully combined. The main thing is to achieve the goal - to find out the characteristics of the applicant's personality.

1. "Endless waiting"

The situation looks like this. The candidate arrives at the appointed time. The secretary or recruiter asks him to wait a bit. Ten minutes pass, fifteen. The request is repeated, while the recruiter can calmly talk with someone or just walk around the office and drink tea. This situation can last from half an hour to an hour. And only after that the interview will begin.

In this case (as always in the interview), it is important what position the candidate is applying for. If you are a private, you are supposed to humbly sit and wait for an invitation to enter the office. In order for the process not to get discouraged, you can entertain yourself with a book, magazine or other things. By demonstrating complete calmness, the candidate demonstrates the ability to control emotions and usefully spend their free time.

For managers, this behavior is not acceptable. It is necessary in ten to fifteen minutes to ask the secretary or recruiter about the reasons for the delay. If there is no clear answer, inform about the impossibility of further waiting, politely say goodbye and leave. As a rule, after some time (in the next five to ten minutes) the candidate will be called back with a proposal to postpone the meeting to a more convenient time. For professionals occupying leadership positions, the ability to delicately resolve conflict situations for the benefit of oneself is of great importance.

1. "Cyclic questionnaire"

Another favorite trick of interviewers. It consists in the following: the candidate is invited to perform tests (fill out a questionnaire). As a rule, it will not be possible to cope the first time. Moreover, the applicant will have to rewrite the assignment several times. The reasons may be incomprehensible handwriting, mistakes and similar trifles.

Interviewers in this way test endurance, loyalty to the organization and the ability to carry out routine work. A little advice: if there is nowhere to sit (there is no table and chair), it is not necessary, modestly twisting in the corner, to write “on your knees”. It is worth finding out where to go to which room to complete the test. The candidate must respect himself.

1. 1. "Under the guise of a boor"

In this game, the recruiter chooses several tactics of behavior. It can be rude. The candidate is constantly interrupted, not allowed to find out or explain anything, criticized and reproached. The applicant has the impression that he came under fire. In such a situation, it is important to focus on the questions and wait for the interviewer to finish speaking. After that, he will clearly state the answers and arguments to the previously voiced questions.

Inappropriate questions about work in the same place, about the reasons for attending this interview, the transition to "you" - all this is aimed at knocking the ground out from under the applicant's feet. It is appropriate for the candidate to emphasize his achievements and personal merit in the answers. If the recruiter switched to "you", then you should politely inform him about the inadmissibility of such liberties. This is especially important for applicants for leadership positions.

1. "No brakes"

An unpleasant and daring way of working with a candidate. The interviewer asks questions that are many and not related to professional responsibilities. He is interested in everything that, one way or another, concerns the applicant - sexy and family life, religion. As a rule, the recruiter actively comments on the answers and presses.

Questions for a stressful interview are selected individually depending on the position. Among them, the most typical and most common ones can be distinguished. Basically, they relate to two areas - professional and personal. Questions for testing stress tolerance in the professional sphere may be as follows:

• How are you better than other candidates?
• Why should we hire you and not another candidate?
• When can we expect the first outstanding results from you?
• What salary do you think is more suitable for your knowledge?
• Tell us what kind of specialist you are.

The main purpose of these questions is to determine how the candidate will handle the anxiety at the very beginning of the interview. They are also aimed at determining the applicant's self-criticism and the ability to control emotions. If the applicant begins to embellish reality, it means that he is confused or very nervous. The applicant must answer the questions clearly and clearly, as accurately as possible.

There are many examples of stressful interviews. Each meeting develops into a funny or not very story. In such interviews, not only the level of self-control of the applicant is important, but also the professionalism of the interviewer. Such meetings are stressful for a person. A competent recruiter must correctly "grope" the character of the candidate and return him to his former calm state, which was before the interview.

How to prepare for a stress interview?

Candidates facing such a meeting should Special attention devote time to solving non-standard puzzles. This will help you approach the search for answers to the tasks in a non-standard way. Reading special literature on the topic of self-control and self-improvement, you can also attend self-development trainings. It is quite difficult to explain how not to get nervous if the situation goes beyond the comfortable environment. Self-confidence and professionalism will help to find a worthy way out in any situation. It is important to focus on the goal and respond appropriately to the situation - with restraint, courtesy and delicacy.

Check out our article on How to Prepare for Your Job Interview:

By asking provocative ones, interviewers do not pursue the goal of finding out the intimate secrets of the applicant, they are simply assessing the level of self-control. It is important for them how the candidate will be able to delicately get out of an unpleasant situation. During a stressful interview, you should not lose your temper, react violently to what is happening. It is simply a test that both the applicant and the applicant have the right to stop at any time.

Video - "Stress interviews when applying for a job"

A stressful interview is a tough interview in which the employer or his authorized person is trying to unbalance a potential employee, a candidate, to put him in a situation in which he is guaranteed to feel uncomfortable. Also, a question or action is used that the candidate will not be ready for.

There is an opinion among employers that this type of interview should be used when interviewing a potential employee who, in the process of work, will certainly have to deal with various stressful situations... This method of interviewing allows you to see the real qualities of the candidate, and not the image with which he is hiding.

The features of the extreme interview questions are a fairly accurate test for stress resistance, a correct assessment of behavior in a stressful situation, as well as a determination of resistance to challenging behavior.

Target audience and what to keep in mind?

Most often, such an interview is carried out for the following groups of people:

• employees of banks, sales areas, customer service departments;
• insurance agents, lenders;
• psychologists;
• public relations specialists, TV presenters, journalists;
• office managers.

There are many different approaches to conducting a stressful interview, however, you should stop looking at the most commonly used ones.

Stressful job interview starts long before the candidate sees the employer or his / her authorized person. It's no secret that many companies, when hiring, artificially create long queues in the corridors and deliberately make them wait in the hope of annoying the job seeker. It is not uncommon when there are fewer sofas or armchairs in the corridor than the number of people in the queue.

You can ask the kindest secretary always to prohibit people in the queue from using the cooler, leafing through the magazines on coffee table, occasionally throw glances full of undisguised anger, and answer all questions through clenched teeth.

How to check stress resistance in an interview?

The next step is the interview itself. Needless to say that you can artificially create the necessary atmosphere in your office ?! In summer, you can completely close all windows and turn off the air conditioner, and in winter, on the contrary, open the windows wide open, and more than one. The cigarette smoke test is not bad - it becomes hard to breathe in a smoky room and it becomes more difficult for potential employees to answer your tricky questions. Listed below are the main techniques used in a stressful interview.

Way "Unequal forces". Do potential employers enter the office one at a time? Fine. But who said that there should be one interviewer too? The "unequal forces" method implies several people who ask questions, are inconveniently located in relation to the candidate. Two people should be on the sides, and one will certainly be behind the back. This method is a great test of equanimity. Does the person turn around even when they are not asked questions? It definitely doesn't suit you.

Long call colleagues, partners, family. During the conversation itself, discussing previous jobs, wages and best qualities the candidate can afford to call and drag out the conversation for a good 20-30 minutes. In this case, you can get up from your place, start walking around the room, and it would be even better to stand behind the interviewee's back and start pacing back and forth.

If the employer does not get into his pocket for a word, and the classics of the genre

Stress interview questions are usually scandalous. They should only be used in very rare cases, when a potential employee must be well, very resistant to a variety of situations, up to a meteorite falling into the office. We recommend that you check out an example of topics for a stress interview:

Disadvantages of the candidate moreover, those that are visible to the naked eye. Provided a sense of tact (or lack thereof), you can ridicule shortcomings not only in professional qualities, but also in appearance and style of clothing. For example, if there is at least one unironed cuff on a shirt, you can squint and ask if irons have been banned in the country for an hour.

Reasons for dismissal from previous places of work.

Personal life job seeker. You should focus on such moments that have absolutely no connection with the place of work. Amount of children? Great, you can ask why the applicant had to have so many children. Was there a second marriage? Better yet, this is an excuse to delve into the reasons for breaking up with your first partner.

Typical stressful questions shouldn't be postponed either. It would be nice to ask the following questions:

1. What a potential employer is able to offer to the company in which he is going to get a job, whether it is worth hiring him and why.
2. What situations most clearly express positive traits candidate.
3. What is the salary this person deserves and why he thinks that this salary is right for him.
4. How long will it take for a candidate to make a tangible contribution to the development of the company.
5. What would the applicant answer to the employer if his answers to the questions were recognized as "insipid" and not of any interest.

In conclusion, it should be noted that correct behavior a potential employee is politeness, even if frowning. If politeness left the interviewee behind - a good reason to leave his resume in the trash can. The choice of methods for a stressful interview should come from the degree of tension in the position. The higher the degree, the more stages of the interview should be involved.

How to conduct a stressful interview? This is what the video is about.