More Than Anxiety

Ep 124 - Overcoming Anxiety In Job Interviews

• Megan Devito • Episode 124

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For the High-Achieving Woman Who Gets Interview Anxiety:

If you're tired of being ghosted or of being told no for the job you know you're prepared and perfect for, this episode is for you.

You're brilliant, qualified, and ready to land your dream role, so stop letting interview anxiety sabotage your career.

This episode helps you:

  • Overcome that "blank" feeling and articulate your value.
  • Calm your nerves (racing heart, sweaty palms).
  • Break free from self-sabotaging thoughts and build unshakeable confidence.

Ready to show the world your brilliance? 
Schedule a free consultation call with me.


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Hey, it’s Megan! I’m so excited to share Ambitious Overthinkers Anonymous—a fun, supportive community for high-achieving women ready to ditch overwhelm, manage stress and anxiety, and create a life they love.

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You know you're overwhelmed, burned out, sick to death of work but also trying to do everyting for everyone at home. TAKE THIS QUIZ to find out why you're so overwhelmed and what to do about it.

Megan Devito:

Welcome to the More Than Anxiety Podcast. I'm Megan Devito and I help ambitious women break out of the anxiety cycle that keeps them frustrated and stuck. Get ready for a lighthearted approach that will change what you think, how you feel and what you believe about yourself. This podcast is full of simple steps, a lot of truth, talk and inspiration to take action so you walk away feeling confident, calm ready to live. Let's get to it.

Megan Devito:

Hey there, welcome back to the More Than Anxiety Podcast. This is episode 124, and my name is Megan Devito. I'm the host of this podcast and I'm also a life coach.

Megan Devito:

I help women who are struggling with anxious feelings, stress, overwhelm get past those feelings inside their body and the thoughts that come with them so that they can be successful at their job and at home. And I want to talk to you about a topic that has really hit home with so many people that I've been connecting with on LinkedIn and in different places all over the internet, and it's really the anxiety about job interviews and how you are doing at your job. So have you ever been in the process of interviewing for a job and maybe you're in that position right now, or maybe you've already gone to an interview and you walk in and you're like man, this job is perfect for me. Like I have all the experience, I know exactly what I'm doing, I've got the skills. But suddenly you sit down and you go blank. You're like terrified, like instantly anxious, feeling like you're going to freak out, and it's so right there in the front of your head. Like everything that you're worried about, that you can't even answer the questions, like you just completely shut down in the interview. If that's happened to you or if you're afraid that's going to happen to you, and maybe it's in a job that you've already got, maybe it's not even in the interview, where you're like I know the answer to this, but I just can't get it to come out of my mouth. We're going to talk about all of this, why it happens and what you can do to change it in this episode. So let's start by understanding what's happening with this anxiousness and what's keeping you stuck in this place. A lot of it is self-doubt, yes, but how can you be confident and have self-doubt at the same time?

Megan Devito:

This happened on a phone call that I had just recently with someone who they were really brilliant, and I mean they had tons of education, tons of knowledge about what it is that they were good at, they were passionate, they knew what they wanted to do. But they had been to several interviews and each of those interviews had left them without a job and still hoping for what they wanted, but also starting to feel really desperate about not having a job. I want to feel successful, I want to be able to give to my family, I want to be able to provide, I want to be fulfilled in my career. But coming out of those job interviews, they had noticed that suddenly their confidence was lower, even though, like rationally, they knew that they knew all of the answers. They were just feeling a lot of doubt about whether or not they were going to get the job, whether they were the right person, what the people were thinking about, who were interviewing them.

Megan Devito:

So when that happens, what is happening is that your anxious brain is keeping you from being able to think clearly. And this is a totally normal brain behavior, because when you go into a level of anxiety or stress, you get into that place of fight or flight, and when you are in fight or flight, the rational thinking area of your brain doesn't kick in. So you might notice this in the way that your body feels. You might notice that you're sitting in the interview and your heart's going a little bit faster. This is pretty normal, right? We get nervous whether we're going into a presentation at work where you're afraid you're going to space out and not know what to say, or you're going to an interview and you suddenly can't answer their questions. Yeah, oh gosh, my heart's really pounding. My hands are starting to shake. I'm a little sweaty. Is it hot in here? Maybe your mouth gets dry so you feel like you constantly need a drink of water.

Megan Devito:

And it might sound like what if they ask me something and I can't answer it? Like what if I just don't know the answer? Which? You know all the answers, because you're really brilliant at what you do, like you've a ton of insight, which is why you applied for the job, or maybe even why you have the job, but suddenly you're questioning yourself that's just your brain trying to protect you. It might also be something like what if they know I'm nervous? What if they know how bad I need this raise? I need this position, I need this, whatever it is? What if they can see right through me? What if they see that maybe they can see that I'm nervous and they think, ugh, they're nervous because they don't know. Just thoughts, it's all okay, it's totally normal. But again, going back to the idea that we're going to, we're going to be able to handle these thoughts in just a minute, okay.

Megan Devito:

And another question that you might have that's really you doubting yourself would be what if I'm not good enough? What if there are so many other people that are interviewing or that are in this pipeline for this raise that are actually better than me? And that may or may not be true, but the fact that you're questioning yourself is just going to make your body feel more anxious. So these thoughts trigger your body to react even more, which makes it harder to focus and even more hard to think clearly. So here's the thing that we have to do, that we also have to recognize If you've had one bad experience, it can really reinforce all of these thoughts and these feelings that you have, because your brain likes to base everything on what it already knows.

Megan Devito:

So let's say that you went in previously to give a presentation and you kind of lost your train of thought, or somebody threw a question at you that you thought you know what. I'd like to double check on this before I answer it, which is a great answer, by the way you didn't make something up. Or you go into the interview and you didn't get the feedback that you were hoping for, like you're just not sure what actually went wrong and why you didn't get the last job that you applied for. So your brain automatically goes to what it already knows, and what it knows is that you didn't get it last time. And when that happens whether you stumbled or you didn't know the answer to a question or you froze your brain really latches onto that memory and it creates the story something like I'm terrible at interviews. Nobody wants to hire me, everybody thinks I'm an idiot. I'm never going to get this position. Nobody my boss thinks that I'm not competent at my job.

Megan Devito:

All of this negative self-talk that you're having is coming from a past experience instead of what's actually true, and what it does is that keeps you trapped in this loop of feeling anxious and avoiding things. Okay, so when you feel anxious, when you notice that your body is starting to feel shaky or really sweaty or your mouth is dry maybe you can't swallow all of those anxiety symptoms that you probably know really well we want to use those symptoms to settle your body down, if you can use how your body feels to recognize what's going on and like wait. The reason I can't think clearly is because I feel anxious. Those anxiety symptoms are actually in your control and so are your thoughts, but you have to have the presence of mind to be able to say I feel anxious. That's why I can't think. It's not all these other things that I think about myself. It's not because I'm stupid, it's not because I don't know, it's not because I'm not the best person for this job. It's because my body is reacting to something that happened in the past.

Megan Devito:

Use those feelings to reset your thoughts using whatever grounding techniques work for you. So one of them that I like to use a lot when for myself would be a really long exhale after I take a normal sized inhale. So I breathe in, I hold my breath for a few seconds and I exhale longer. There are tons of grounding techniques all over the internet. For some of the people that I work with, breathing is the best. It works well for me, so it's where I start. But it's not. It's not for everyone.

Megan Devito:

So one of the things I do with my clients is really help you find one that works best for you, because if you're really sensitive to how you're breathing, I don't want to go there with you. I want to find something that's easier and it could be as simple as scanning the room to find everything that's your favorite color, to paying attention to how your big toe feels in your shoe which nobody ever pays attention to how their big toe feels, unless there's a blister or something or a crooked sock. But if you can go back to that place, those are great ways to bring you back into the present moment so that you can calm your body down and start answering those questions based on what you want in the future instead of your past experience experience. So if you are in a position in 2025, where you're like you know what, I really want to leave my job and go interview for a new one, but I have a lot of thoughts and feelings about the interview process, about what I am capable of achieving any of those things.

Megan Devito:

If you are in a job and you want to ask for a promotion or a raise or just to be able to present new ideas, you have to learn how to calm your body down so that you can show the world what you've got to bring; and, for goodness sake, we really need everybody acting at like their highest level, and I totally believe that if everybody were doing that, if everybody knows how to do that, dang, the world is going to be a good place to be, isn't it? Think about all the things we could change if everybody just showed up being their own brilliant selves and feeling really confident. I know, maybe that's a pipe dream, but I don't think so, because every time somebody learns how to calm their body and to change their thoughts, every person that I work with leaves knowing how to help somebody else. It just multiplies like crazy.

Megan Devito:

It's like my favorite thing about my job is that, like I can help one person or 10 people, or 100 people, and those 100 people can go out and help more people and it explodes. We're going to knock out this mental health crisis. We really, really are. There are so many therapists and coaches working together to try to get people to the point where they're like no, I feel good, it is happening. And let's use that information to your benefit for you to be able to do the best that you can do in your job and take it even further right? So, whether you are a teacher, whether you are a, an HR exec, whether you are running a you know a huge corporation, whatever it is that you're doing, please do it to the very best of your ability, feeling really confident and showing other people how to do that as well.

Megan Devito:

So let's talk about what happens if you choose to stay where you are, because I know it can feel really scary, first of all, to admit that you don't feel confident, but also to ask for help. There's something about it where we think we should be able to do it ourselves, but we have to also remember that we're hearing our own voice most of the time. That could be a really great thing or a really bad thing, but if you've been stuck in a place where you feel anxious and stressed for a long time, my guess is that your internal dialogue isn't that kind or truthful. So many of the thoughts that we think are just repeat thoughts that aren't true at all. So let's talk about what happens if you stay in that place. First of all, you're just going to stay stuck and feeling miserable, and I don't want that for you. And nobody else does either, or at least nobody that actually cares about you does. Okay.

Megan Devito:

So what happens if you don't break this cycle of feeling anxious and not being able to think? Just remember that anxiety doesn't just stay in that interview or in that job. It comes home with you and you start to feel anxious about yourself at home and start questioning other areas of your life. It comes home with you and it goes to new opportunities. So maybe you do want to let's say, you want to leave your teaching job, like I did, and go find something else that you want to do.

Megan Devito:

If you are thinking about all the things that have happened in the past and you're taking those forward with you, or maybe you've been applying and you're like, I don't know, I guess I'm just stuck here. That's not true, by the way, but if you're taking that forward, what it's going to do? It's going to keep showing up and it's going to keep growing and it will move into your personal life. So you'll start being grouchy because you're judging yourself and your mood is bad, right, like when you're thinking negative thoughts all the time. You're in a bad mood. It just makes sense and it's because you're believing the thoughts that you have. So you'll notice that your relationships start to struggle. Maybe you start arguing with your kids or your partner, or you're just like I don't have any motivation to go out with anybody, like I just feel so crappy all the time that I don't want to. I'm too nervous to talk to anybody now, so there's no way I'm going to go out and put myself out there to try and date somebody different. Whatever it is, it just feels safer to keep going sometimes, even if you find yourself settling for a job that you don't love, because it feels safer than trying to do another interview.

Megan Devito:

You might start believing that you're not capable of any more than what you have right now, and that is not true. And this cost is not just in your professional life. Right, you don't want to have a bad relationship with your partner or your spouse or your kids or your neighbors or your parents or your siblings, whoever it is. But when you're carrying that potential around, that's not happening. If you're staying in this small place of anxiety and you're not challenging those beliefs about yourself, you're not going to grow and you're not going to change. It has to be a mindset and a habit shift. So there's a lot of really good reasons for you to look at. What do I need to do to move forward so that I don't stay in this place? Even when it feels scary, even when it feels true, it doesn't mean it is.

Megan Devito:

Let's talk about what you can do to change this habit. First, you need to manage your mind and that negative self-talk isn't just something that comes out of your mouth with no effect, because what you say, especially when it starts with the words I am, becomes your truth. Your brain just accepts it as a statement of fact, even though it's not. And there's another area of that word I am. If you are spiritual, if you are religious, that mimics the name of God almost like God made you that way. If you're a believer and you follow any context in the Bible, the Qaran or anything else, God didn't say I made you a schmuck at all at all. That's not what it says. It's just negative self-talk and it's a huge roadblock because your brain believes it and your body follows it up with physical sensations that are keeping you trapped. You have to start noticing those thoughts and challenging them. As soon as they come into your mind, and especially if they come out of your mouth, you stop, you change it instantly.

Megan Devito:

So if you notice yourself saying I suck at interviews, stop. I've had a few bad interviews. But that's not who I really am. Totally different. You're not saying all of my interviews are amazing because that's not true. We don't want to be fake here, right, we don't want this like toxic, false positivity. You can be truthful with yourself, your brain knows when you're lying. I've had a few bad interviews, but I know I'm really, really talented. It's entirely different than I suck at interviews. Ask yourself is what I'm saying really actually true Like could I prove this in a court of law kind of true, or is it just my anxiety talking? Is it just my brain being mean to me? Is it just trying to protect me from something? Ask yourself some questions and get really clear on what is true.

Megan Devito:

But you also need to manage your body, and that goes back to what I talked about just a couple minutes ago about knowing your anxiety symptoms specifically for you and knowing what you can do to calm them down, because anxiety is actually a physical feeling. The thoughts are really just a symptom. So, since anxiety is as much mental or is as much physical sorry as it is mental if you don't address what's happening in your body and at least acknowledge that you feel anxious, sometimes that's all it takes. I feel really anxious today, and since I feel anxious, I know my brain's kind of scrambled. It's going to overpower your ability to think clearly, and that's not what you want. It's actually the exact exact opposite of what you want. So take the time to learn how to calm your nervous system. It is so important. It is so important. When I'm coaching someone, it is never only about their thoughts, even though their thoughts are really important, because they will feed that feeling in your body and make it more intense.

Megan Devito:

But we always talk about let's, let's pay attention to how your body feels. When you, when you're telling me these things, just pause for a second. How do you feel right now? What does that feeling mean? Because when you stop and pause and really pay attention to your body, you can start identifying individual emotions that, yes, feel bad, but sometimes are anxiety, but sometimes it's other things. Sometimes it's like guilt, sometimes it's grief, sometimes it's jealousy, sometimes it's anger, and all of those emotions can get wrapped up and we just call them anxiety and we just call them bad, when what we really need to do is say, oh, what's that you said?

Megan Devito:

You feel like you feel jealous. Okay, who are you jealous of? Why are you jealous? What do you wish you had? How can we make that happen for you? Jealousy is a really, really uncomfortable emotion and it is so useful If we can find a way to use it to your benefit pretty amazing. So if you come to me and you say, Megan, I just feel jealous of my coworker, all right, wait, what are you jealous about? Do you want that? Do you want help getting that? If you do, come see me, I'm going to help you get what you want. Okay, but you have to pay attention to your body and to listen to it. So back to learning how to calm your nervous system so that you can really sort out what you're thinking. This is absolutely something that you can figure out and master as soon as you have a process and some accountability.

Megan Devito:

So, finally, we also have to look at what it is that you want to say about yourself. What do you want your story to be? That one bad interview, that one presentation, that one interaction that you had with somebody doesn't define you unless you let it. It's actually a choice. You are the one saying it defines you. Everybody else has probably forgotten about it. Did you know that most people do not think about you near as much as you think they do? I mean, really, when you're sitting at home wondering what the person thought about you in the restaurant the other night, they haven't thought about you at all. Most likely, I mean unless there was a really bad interaction between the 2 of you, and even then they're probably not hanging on to onto it the way that you are.

Megan Devito:

So what you want to do is you want to imagine what you want for yourself. You want to imagine walking into your next interview feeling really calm, like oh yeah, I got this, like I feel good. Notice what calm feels like in your body. What does it feel like to be confident and to be sure of yourself? What would it be like for you to walk in and tell them everything so you could like showcase, like if you could roll it out on this big fancy tray and be like ta-da, look what I can do, what would that be like? And really go there, spend time imagining what that would be, and that is what's possible when you learn to manage the feeling in your body and change the way you see yourself. So take a second and think about that, especially if you need to like pause this episode and I would totally write it down. Grab a journal, grab some pens and write it down. What would that be like for me? So let me give you a really quick example.

Megan Devito:

Okay, I was talking on the phone, I told you recently, with someone who told me that they were really struggling with job interviews. I'm going to call this person Sarah I don't ever give anybody's name, okay, but they came to me after they had this really rough interview with somebody and they're like I do not know what I did wrong. I just know that when I walked in, they asked me a question and I went blank, like the kind of blank where you're like, I'm sorry, I don't understand what you're asking me and I don't know how and they were really embarrassed and sort of humiliated because they convinced she had convinced herself that she was not the one that was supposed to have this role. Like maybe I'm not as good as I thought I was, maybe I actually am kind of stupid and everybody knows more than me Lots of different things that were going on inside her brain. Obviously, I'm not supposed to change jobs, I'm not supposed to get this, raise all these different things. Okay, so this was going on and she just had this idea that, like, that was the end. She was supposed to get over it and she was really sad about this. Okay, so we talked about this and we talked about, like tell me what's going on inside of your body? Like how do you feel? And she's like I just feel so anxious. So what happened was I just ended up explaining like this is what's happened.

Megan Devito:

You've had a bad interview and your brain is just preparing you for another one, but that doesn't mean it has to be that way. What your brain is trying to do is to protect you from feeling those same really uncomfortable emotions twice. Your brain tries to protect you from emotions. Did you guys know that? Not just from being hit by a car or from, you know, being attacked by a bear or whatever it is. It tries to protect you from feeling sad or guilty or jealous or anything else that feels too intense, even really intense happiness, it will try to protect you from joy because it doesn't want you to feel disappointed. It's really sneaky, you guys, very, very sneaky.

Megan Devito:

So when you can recognize like, oh, my brain's trying to protect me, then you can start to choose. Like, I don't know, can I handle feeling a lot of joy? Can I handle feeling some disappointment? Yeah, you can. You've done it before. No, I know you don't want to, but you can handle it. So if you're feeling humiliated, okay, and humiliated is kind of one of the words that Sarah had used. So if you're feeling humiliated, let's talk about managing the feelings in your body and talk about okay, if I feel humiliated, it would be because of these situations, you know, and really getting into the idea of what do you actually think is going to happen.

Megan Devito:

Let's talk about what it would be like to ace this next interview. What would it be like? What would you do if you knew you were going to ace this next interview? How would you show up? And when we do that, when we talk about those things, your brain believes that it's happening in real time. So every time you go there, your brain uses that as evidence for what's possible, not just your past experiences that you've actually, that you've actually physically gone to, because when your brain imagines it, it assumes it's true. That's why anxiety feels so intense. So here's why coaching is the solution that you're looking for. Change does not happen overnight, but it does happen pretty quickly and it takes intention and decisions. You have to have support, because if you were going to do this on your own and yes, I'm not saying it's not possible, but if you're going to do it on your own, you're going to have to be really intentional on managing your mind and your body at the same time. If you don't know how to do that, it's going to be a long process with lots of really intense highs and lows, and what coaching does is it levels that playing field out so that you still have.

Megan Devito:

I want you to have bumps in the road, guys. I want you to learn that it's okay to feel anxious and to bounce back from it, because you do it all the time. We just want to lower those bumps so it's not intensely anxious and intensely joyous. That's where it gets difficult. We want the anxiety to be like yeah, I felt really anxious. It was super uncomfortable, I didn't like it at all and I got out of it and I moved on. I learned how to handle that, because when you do, you become resilient and you grow your confidence.

Megan Devito:

So we start rewriting these stories that you've been telling yourself and changing your habits on how you respond to those stories. First of all, we write stories that you want to experience instead of what you don't want to experience, and we deal with the ups and downs as they come. Every week you talk with me on the phone and I say Tell me something good. Now, tell me what you struggled with this week. What do you want coached on in this, and you get to tell me where we're going. I hope you find the thoughts and the habits that are keeping you right where you are so that you can move forward.

Megan Devito:

Coaching is really that bridge between where you are now and where you want to be, and it's done by saying these are this is what you're telling me, this is what you're doing. Tell me why. Tell me how it benefits you. Tell me what you'd rather do instead. Let's play the scenarios, let's work it out and come up with a plan so that not only do you have support, but you've got accountability. So I'm going to ask you again the next week did you follow through on your plan? And if you didn't, I'm going to say why not. What kept you from doing that? It's almost always a thought. It's almost always what you think is going to happen. So when we work together, we don't just talk about strategies, we also practice them and we create a plan that is tailored absolutely to you and what you want. So you're not just hoping that things are going to get better, you're actively making them better. So you're going to learn how to calm your nervous system so that you can think clearly, which is really important. If you keep telling yourself that you can't think clearly in an interview or in a presentation or whatever this looks like for you, we're going to challenge and change the way that you talk to yourself. This is really important.

Megan Devito:

I one time worked with a coach who called me out on some things I was saying about myself and she said stop being mean to my friend. And I was like what are you talking about? She's like you are my friend, stop being mean to yourself. That stuck, that stuck. I hope I have something that sticks with you like that, the way that that stuck for me, it'll happen. So change and challenge the way you talk to yourself, because you are your own best friend and you have to stop talking to yourself in a way that you wouldn't talk to your best friend your mom, your grandmother, your aunt, your sister, your cousin, whoever it is who you love the most. And you're going to build confidence and resilience that carries through the interviews, but also into your relationships, also into all of the other things that you want to do in your life, because when you change one thing, everything changes. It's such a big deal, you guys. So, if this resonates with you, if you're like, wait a second, I think she's talking to me.

Megan Devito:

I want to invite you to take the next step and I just want you to imagine yourself a few months from now walking into an interview, walking into a presentation, and you feel really calm, like I mean the kind of calm where you feel a little bit fizzy inside because you're kind of excited, actually, because you feel really confident and you show up, you are ready to show the world what you are capable of. Like, let me show you everything that I know and what I'm good at. You will just walk in like that, not in an arrogant kind of way, but in a you guys are going to be so excited to see this. It's not just something in your head, it is completely within your reach, absolutely within your reach, and I'm here to help you get it. This is my favorite thing. I feel like Santa Claus, like all year long.

Megan Devito:

If you want to talk more about this, you can head over to my website and you can. It's in the show notes. So just click the link in the show notes and book a free consultation call. Let's talk about where you are now and where you want to be, and how we can work together to make that happen. So I cannot wait to talk with you. Thank you so much for joining me today.

Megan Devito:

Remember, anxiety does not define you. It is not one bad experience that's going to determine your entire future. You have everything you need to be successful right now. You just need the right tools and the support to get it out of you. Until next week. If I don't talk to you before, I will be back then. Take care. I hope you enjoyed this episode of the More Than Anxiety podcast. Before you go, be sure to subscribe and leave a review so others can easily find this resource as well. And, of course, if you're ready to feel calm, to stop overthinking and have a lot more fun, you can go to the show notes, click the link and talk to me about coaching. I'll talk to you soon.