Fresh graduate with my first experience of a technical interview in this particular sector I interviewed in today.
The technical question wasn’t hard. But the pressure made me choke. Aarrrgghhh. It is what it is. I could tell that the guy who interviewed me was frustrated after a point too. I tried to keep my spirits up throughout the whole thing. When we moved on to the second part of the interview, despite knowing that the first part was a flop, I tried to keep it together and answered the second part with focus and engagement and independent of how I felt about the first part. At the end, I asked questions to the interviewer that I had actually thought about and connected them to his projects and experience at the firm. Remained polite, professional, engaged, actually applied my thinking to the questions.
I prepared for this interview earnestly, tried my best to stay calm under pressure, broke down under pressure, but tried to keep it together and remain engaged and not give up mid interview despite the loud feelings and voices inside me that were giving me a real-time commentary of how bad it was going.
The feelings weren’t wrong per se. It wasn’t pessimistic thinking. But sometimes you have to ignore the voices and do the thing you are supposed to do and see them through to the end even if the negative voices are right.