How to Calm Nerves Before an Interview: A 5-Minute Routine That Works

You don't need to get rid of interview nerves. Use the last five minutes to slow your breathing, call the feeling excitement, and say your first answer out loud once. The aim is to keep the energy and steady the shakiness, not to make the nerves disappear.

A lot of advice on interview nerves is about the night before: lay out your clothes, research the company, get some sleep. All useful, and none of it helps in the waiting area while your heart is pounding. This guide is for those last few minutes. It gives you one routine, minute by minute, and the research behind each step.

Key takeaways

• Most people believe calming down is the best way to handle nerves. In a Harvard study, saying “I'm excited” led to better performance than trying to calm down.
• Slow breathing switches on your body's calming system, during the breathing and right after a single session.
• Rehearsing in your head reliably improves performance, so run through your opening answer before you go in.
• Interviewers barely notice small nervous tics. What they do pick up is speed.

The short answer

Three steps, in the last five minutes before you're called in:

The Rilo routine

1. 1

   Breathe

   Two physiological sighs, then in for 4, out for 6, for about two minutes.

2. 2

   Rename it

   Say “I'm excited,” then coach yourself by name: “You're ready, [your name].”

3. 3

   Rehearse your first move

   Say your answer to “Tell me about yourself” out loud, once.

None of them needs more than a quiet corner. The sections below take one step at a time: how to do it, and the research behind it.

Why “just calm down” doesn't work

Most people believe telling yourself to calm down is the best way to handle nerves. In a Harvard study, people who said “I'm excited” before singing, giving a speech or doing math performed better than people who tried to calm down.^[1] These were lab tasks, not interviews. There's a longer case for why getting rid of nerves is the wrong goal.

Calling the feeling excitement changes how the moment looks: in the same study, it left people seeing an opportunity rather than a threat.^[1] For the full picture, see the research on turning anxiety into excitement.

Your body is already switched on in the waiting area. Adrenaline speeds up your heart and breathing and tenses your muscles to get you ready to act.^[2] Seeing that racing heart as useful changes how your body responds: in one experiment it led to a more efficient, less constricted cardiovascular response.^[3]

Nerves are still worth managing. Interview nerves do cost people some performance on average.^[4] The routine below is how to manage them in the last five minutes.

The 5-minute pre-interview routine

Find somewhere you won't be interrupted for five minutes: a restroom, a stairwell, your car or a quiet corner of the lobby. Before a video interview, do it at your desk with the camera off.

Minutes 0–2: slow your breathing

Start with two physiological sighs: a full breath in through your nose, a second short sip of air on top of it, then a long, slow breath out through your mouth. Then breathe in for a count of 4 and out for a count of 6, for about two minutes.

Slowing your breathing down does the work. A review of 223 studies found slow breathing switches on the body's calming system, during the breathing and right after a single session.^[5] Even a single session of slow breathing with a longer exhale lowered anxiety in the moment.^[6]

The routine starts with two sighs because each one ends in a long breath out. The research on them tested daily practice: in a Stanford trial, five minutes a day of cyclic sighing lifted mood more than mindfulness meditation.^[7]

Other guides often suggest box breathing: in for 4, hold for 4, out for 4, hold for 4. That's slow breathing too. This routine uses a longer exhale because that's what the single-session study above tested.

Minute 3: rename the feeling, and coach yourself by name

Now say it out loud: “I'm excited.” If someone can hear you, say it under your breath. It may feel a little silly. In the Harvard study, saying those words out loud before the task was enough.^[1]

Then talk to yourself the way a coach would, with your own name instead of “I”: “You're ready, Sam. You know this job.” People who coached themselves by name gave better speeches and felt less distressed than those who said “I.”^[8]

Minutes 4–5: rehearse your opening

Many interviews open with “Tell me about yourself” or “Walk me through your background.” Picture the room or the call, and the interviewer asking it. Picturing it counts: rehearsing in your head reliably improves performance.^[9]

Then, if you can, say your answer once out loud, at the pace you'd like to say it in the room. That way the real answer isn't the first time you've heard it.

Rehearse the opening and nothing else. Under pressure, over-monitoring something you already know how to do can make it fall apart, so rehearse your opening, then let the practiced part run.^[10]

Short on time? The one-minute version

If they call you in early, keep the order and shrink each step: three slow breaths with a long exhale, “I'm excited” once, and the first sentence of your opening answer in your head. It takes about a minute, and it puts that minute to work.

What interviewers actually notice

Interviewers barely notice small nervous tics. What they do pick up is speed, so slow your first answer down.^[11]

Research on public speaking adds one more reassurance: speakers consistently overestimate how nervous they look to their audience.^[12]

A simple fix in the room: take a breath before you answer, and start your first sentence a little slower than feels natural. If shaky hands are what worry you most, read why your hands shake and how to steady them.

Interview nerves come in five kinds

Researchers who measured interview nerves in 212 students and 276 real job applicants found they come in five kinds: how you'll talk, how you look, how you'll come across socially, whether you'll perform, and what your body does.^[13] The study didn't link the kinds to fixes. Here's the step we'd lean on for each:

You may recognize more than one. Do the whole routine anyway, and spend a little longer on your step.

What to skip in the last five minutes

A few habits feel productive in the waiting area and pull against the routine:

• Rereading all your notes. It can keep your mind on everything you might forget. Look at one thing only: your opening answer.
• Scrolling your phone. Messages and news can pull your attention away right before you need it. Check the time, then put the phone away.
• Asking yourself “What if I blank?” Answer it instead: say your opening once, and you've already shown yourself what comes first.
• Trying to look perfectly calm. You don't need to hold your face and hands perfectly still: interviewers barely notice small nervous tics.^[11]

The hour before

Save the routine for the last five minutes, and leave room for it. Settle your route, clothes and documents the night before, so the hour before the interview is free. Arrive early enough to find your quiet corner, then wait for the five-minute mark.

If nerves hit mid-interview

Nerves can spike halfway through, say, on a question you didn't expect. You don't need the whole routine. Breathe out slowly once before you answer, and start a little slower than feels natural, because speed is what interviewers pick up on.^[11]

If your mind goes blank, say so plainly: “Let me think about that for a second.” A short pause buys you a moment to think.

Before you walk in

Two minutes of slow breathing. One sentence: “I'm excited.” One run-through of your opening answer. You'll probably still feel some nerves when you walk in, and that's fine. The routine isn't meant to make the feeling disappear. It gives the feeling a job.

You can use the same three steps before a presentation or an exam. Rilo's interview warmup is built on the same research and walks you through it in a few minutes.