Missed my interview today because my anxiety completely took over at the last minute and I genuinely feel horrible about it.
What makes it worse is that I was actually prepared for it. I spent 3 days preparing, researched the company, practiced answers, understood the role properly and this wasn’t even some random opportunity. It was for an HR/recruitment role and could’ve genuinely been the start of my switch from tech into recruitment, which I’ve been seriously trying to move into. I’m already doing a recruitment internship right now too.
And then literally right before the interview my brain just spiraled into:
“What if I blank out?”
“What if I sound stupid?”
“What if I ruin it?”
“What if they realize I’m not good enough?”
And instead of joining normally like a sane person, I froze, delayed it, panicked more and by the time I joined I was late and the interviewer had already left.
The embarrassing part is knowing I was qualified enough for it. That’s what’s eating me alive right now. It feels like I sabotaged myself before anyone else even got the chance to reject me.
Now I’m sitting here feeling ashamed because missing an interview over fear sounds so stupid when I say it out loud, especially after wanting the opportunity this badly and there are PEOPLE OUT THERE WHO WOULD WANT THIS TOO AND NOT END UP BEING A CHICKEN LIKE ME...
And to top it off, I think part of what messed me up is that I’ve gotten so comfortable being on the other side of the process now.
In my current recruitment internship, I handle screening calls and candidate coordination, so I’m usually the one asking questions, observing people, understanding how they think, calming their uncertainty, etc. I can genuinely picture myself growing in recruitment and I KNOW I’m capable in that space.
But the moment I had to sit in front of the interviewer again as the candidate, something in me just shut down completely. Which is weird because I was never THIS bad during my first internship interview after switching from tech.
Now it almost feels like the more this opportunity mattered to me, the more terrified I became of messing it up and I ended up doing exactly that before the interview even started.
Have any of you genuinely gone through this before? Like fully dipping or freezing right before an interview you actually wanted badly? How did you get over this cycle?
And please tell me this isn’t something that’s going to permanently mess up my confidence because right now I genuinely feel so embarrassed and disappointed in myself 😭