This keeps happening to me and I can’t figure out why.
I’ll be in an interview feeling fine and then they hit me with something like “tell me about a time you had to persuade someone who disagreed with you” and I just stall. Like I know I have examples. I’ve literally done this at work multiple times. But in the moment my brain just serves up nothing.
I started practicing with an AI interview simulator someone recommended on here a while back. Attached a short clip from a session. The AI asks that exact persuasion question and you can see the moment where I start to answer, get about two sentences into talking about a technical team situation, and then just completely lose the thread. Just “I had to…” and nothing.
That’s exactly what happens to me in real interviews too. It’s not a knowledge problem. It’s like my brain can’t retrieve and talk at the same time when there’s pressure.
The only thing that’s been helping is just doing it over and over until the freezing happens less. It’s still not perfect but the gap between question and answer is getting shorter.
Anyone else deal with this or found something that helps?