4 Simple Steps To Minimizing Your Stress For That Big Job Interview

1. Relax Beforehand

Maybe you masturbate, maybe you eat a double cheeseburger with one hand while using the other to smoke a cigarette, maybe you roundhouse kick some garbage cans and then set them on fire—whatever it takes, I know you can make it to unwind pre-interview. Avoid the vicious tension circle of stressing about feeling too stressed. You know what you like; this fat relaxation sesh, much like an all-you-can-eat-buffet or jaunt into the universe of Internet porn, is all about you and precisely what you’re into. Indulge your non-guilt-inducing, hedonistic tendencies (privately if they’re bizarrely-specific erotic deviance) and you’ll be feeling fantastic.

Revel in your pleasuring-inducing; all of this self-imposed sensory delight will have your mind sharp and focused for your interview. You don’t want to be halfway through and suddenly start jonesing for a funnel cake or jibber joint; no, stop the cravings before they happen and be that attentive, thorough candidate interviewers swoon over. Clear eyes, full hearts, can’t lose.

2. Radiate Confidence

This isn’t personifying that cocky, Entourage-obsessed, collar-popping doody stain on humanity everyone knows whose very existence serves as a compelling argument for legalizing 88th-trimester abortions. No, this is inherently knowing you can do this job and being able to giving thorough, concrete answers to illustrate why. It’s knowing your qualified and that your self-preaching will come across as sincere, not boastful—you’re not that pompous Facebook friend who can’t stop slobbering on his own dong or munching on her own box through self-serving statues and photos every time he or she helps someone or contributes to charity.

Don’t’ worry if you’re the humble, self-conscious type. All you have to do then is fake having confidence. It’s quite easy actually; no more difficult than faking any other emotion until it’s believable the way you would for any book club, long-term relationship, or funeral.

3. Keep Things In Perspective

An unsuccessful interview is merely a drop in the bucket of life. It’s an errant candy wrapper in a garbage-filled world. It’s another rogue piece of sandwich shrapnel amidst the covers and sheets left over from your aggressive, night eating habits.

Internally pouting like a little fun burglar because of the unnecessary stress you’ve put on yourself before or during interview isn’t going to do anything except increase your risk for a peptic ulcer. So, unless you have a fetish for throwing up blood, don’t put an insane, Dance Moms-esque amount of pressure on yourself. Sure, maybe you waste a little bit of time and gas money if your application ultimately doesn’t pay off, but no one is dying, no one is relapsing back down the heroin rabbit hole, and no one is canceling the second season of House of Cards if you don’t get this job.

4. Exit and Distract Yourself

The inquisition has ended, there are no more oddly-moist hands to shake, and you’re returning home in that capsule of smells you refer to as your car. Let it all go; you’ve done everything you can do at this point and it’s over. Avoid getting too far into your own head and twisting your memory into something else as you lie awake, dwelling on the skewed notion that when you came in with your hand in your pocket all the interviewers must’ve immediately assumed you were touching yourself or that your fourth answer, if construed in one highly-specific way, could be interpreted as you trying to validate Andrew Jackson’s Trail of Tears.

Again, you know yourself and of course you know what it takes to unproductively distract yourself. What’s typically procrastination this time is a useful, necessary diversion. So identify that thing, be it going to the bar with friends, delving, yet again, into a book series about a boy wizard, or maybe just popping in that Roller Coaster Tycoon CD-ROM, and immerse yourself in it for the rest of the night.