Laser tag helped me when I was dealing with social anxiety. Get used to feeling the squirt of adrenaline and start to associate it with good things instead.
Ask HN: Answering interview with major social anxiety, how can I do better?
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Re: Ask HN: Answering interview with major social anxiety, how can I do better?
#12Sounds like you can improve your confidence. People have a sixth sense, of sorts, for confidence and it shows plainly in interviews. If you know you do good work, take some pride in your accomplishments (then temper your pride by knowing you can always continue to improve).
I know this is somewhat vague general advice, but confidence has helped me through many high pressure situations.
Re: Ask HN: Answering interview with major social anxiety, how can I do better?
#13Is it social anxiety or just anxiety in general? Nothing in what you wrote indicates the social aspect of anxiety. It seems that you just get anxious due to being in high-stakes, high-pressure situation - not because you're being in a social situation (do you get nervous and choke when at a party, or talking to a clerk in a bank? - these are examples of social anxiety).
If it's just general, and fully justified anxiety due to being in high-stakes situation where you have to think on the fly - my advice is that you just need to toughen up. Start putting yourself in situations where you're outside of your comfort zone more often - you'll feel anxiety similar to the one you experience during interviews, and will slowly learn to handle it.
As for the interviewing advice specifically - interviews are free, so you can just do a ton of them to practice. After you do a bunch of them, you'll be able to smoothly introduce yourself and talk about your past work, just thanks to having done that a lot in the past. But, also, practice doing it outside of interviews! Literally prepare to it like you prepare to a presentation you have to do at work. The part of the interview when you introduce yourself and your experience is basically a sales pitch and you have to work on your sales skills to pull it off well enough (You don't have to become a pro sales person, but you definitely have to say more than just "I'm a backend engineer". When I introduce myself during interviews, I generally give a 5-10 minute overview of what I did in my past roles that is related to what the interviewing company's needs).
Also, a nice trick during interviews if you're nervous is to just mention it. If you're visibly underperforming, say something like "sorry, I get nervous during those things" - this will remind the interviewer that you are in fact under a lot of pressure at the moment, and they'll be more likely to help you out if you're stuck, and be more sympathetic to your situation in general.
Re: Ask HN: Answering interview with major social anxiety, how can I do better?
#14I want to share my interview fail story. It potentially cost me an annual salary that was jaw dropping.
My experience is designing and implementing HA distributed systems at high scale. I rode a unicorn and became a principal engineer after years of work. I conducted many hundreds of interviews as we grew, and specifically dozens and dozens of "implement an lru cache."
My interview question given to me? Yeah, implement an lru cache. My mind absolutely blanked. Like full blank. I can't even explain it. I had to start at first principals and made silly mistakes. I bumbled on the keyboard. I thought I was nervous before we started! Ha!