A bold statement, but actually true. Stress can deeply affect how your candidates think and respond at job interviews. The anxiety and pressure to perform at our best elevates the production of stress hormone, cortisol, in our brain. How can you downplay the cortisol effect?

To maximise your tech recruitment efficiency, you should always pay attention to making the interview environment as friendly and stress-free as possible. But you want to get the most out of these tech talents, don’t you? So, the interview shouldn’t be just a walk in the park, but rather show the candidate’s full potential.

Now, we’ve come to these so-called stress interviews that reveal candidates' abilities in a different environment.

Here’s a great stress interview example by Elon Musk. Elon is known for his unconventional interview questions to gauge candidates’ creativity, problem-solving ability, and pressure tolerance. One of his famous questions is, “If you had a machine that could change the size of a penguin, what would you do with it, and how would it help the penguin?” Not a typical software engineering challenge, right?!

Here are some practical steps to override the cortisol effect and unlock candidates’ full potential.

Imagine this: your candidate sits down for an interview, lightly blushing, palms sweating, heart racing. They’re not just nervous, they’re in survival mode.That’s because our brain releases cortisol to prepare for a perceived threat. Cortisol impairs memory recall and decision-making, so even the simplest questions might be tough to answer. During an interview, this fight-or-flight response does more harm than good.

If you’re aware of this, you can calm the candidate down and make them feel safe to help them perform at their fullest.

When the candidate freezes mid-answer, blame cortisol. If our brain is flooded with stress hormones, it diverts resources away from higher-level thinking to focus on immediate survival. This makes it hard to think clearly, recall past experiences, or come up with creative solutions.

If you’re prepared for this, you know how to handle such situations and unlock candidates’ creativity.

When cortisol levels spike, our emotional regulation can suffer. The candidate might come across as less confident or more defensive, not because they’re unqualified, but because their brain is overwhelmed by stress.

Take notice of this and follow such situations up with a light-hearted question or a friendly joke.

In fact, there is a way to maximise your job interview results. The key to that is making the conversation as comfortable as possible for your candidate. Lucky for you, there’s a scientifically proven method for that. Do you want to know how you can decrease the cortisol effect?

The answer is actually really simple. It`s deep breathing. Deep rhythmic breathing has a physiological effect on our body, calming us down, and lowering our heart rate and cortisol levels we talked about earlier.

There’s an exercise you can share with your candidates to prepare them for a great job interview. It works every time, no matter how stressful or stress-free the interview will end up being.

Box breathing is an effective breathing exercise for energy regulation, used even by Navy SEALs.

Feel free to get my template to help you boost tech recruitment efficiency and unlock the real potential of your candidates. Get it now and let me know how you’ll do!

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