Tips for rock-solid confidence at interviews?

Question

Hello all,
I'm currently prepping for the Fall 2018 interviews at MBB/Tier2 firms. I think I'm a strong candidate: I finished top of my programmes at target schools, have strong leadership and management examples, and have a large range of competitive extracurricular activities & foreign languages. My CV was screened by ex-MBB partners and deemed to be excellent. I am preparing quite thoroughly and I feel that I could really contribute to a firm as a consultant.
However, I have issues with feeling and appearing confident and believe that they might cause me to miss out on offers; I have previously done final rounds at the Big4 and systematically panicked when asked whether I was certain of my answers (they were correct, but I still spent minutes looking for a mistake).

I definitely don't want to lose out on opportunities because I don't appear confident, and so I was wondering if you had tips - apart from practice - on appearing confident at interviews.

PS: I am not interested in answers of the type "JUST BE IT" - but concrete tips to build confidence and not lose ground in front of interviewers (strong eye contact? speaking loudly? You tell me!)

Answer 1

Here's a concrete tip: put things in perspective:

1. You are good,they need good people... you have something to offer that they are looking for

2. You are speaking with one company at a time, there are many others who want to interview you as well. Ok,so this interview isn't going so well? They were not the right company anyway

3. These cases and math questions? They are just games; think "IQ test", or "Jeopardy". It's fun, just enjoy the moment

4. Nothing works this time? You will have other opportunities to try consulting, including (a) after a couple of years of solid work experience, (b) after a masters degree, and again (c) as an experienced hire

5. You dont need consulting to have a great and fulfilling career anyway. Consultancies reject many thousands of candidates each year who end up doing really well elsewhere. Oh, and those guys have a real work life balance too!

I understand your whole life may seem to depend on whether you do well in the next interviews - but take a step back. In the grand scheme of things, it really isn't all that important. You are prepared, you are good... things will be fine.

Good luck!