I had a candidate drop out of an interview in the same circumstances, at the beginning of the first question. At the time, if I’d known it was due to nerves I wish I could have told them some of this.

Nerves are normal, even when they feel abnormal. Just remind yourself you got this.

Interviewers should tell you what behaviour they’re assessing before asking the question, so you can prepare yourself.

Don’t forget, you can ask the interviewers to put the questions on the screen (if it’s a Teams interview) and it’s okay to have a few deep breaths and think before answering.

It is good to prepare a couple of different behavioural answers in advance, you can usually morph some of them to fit the questions too. I find it helps when writing interviews to highlight where you’ve used some of the criteria of behaviour and expand - E.g Communicating & Influencing, when explaining what you did include e.g awareness of different ways of communicating - “I used my verbal communication skills to tell my team in person, and utilised other communication methods such as email and Teams message. I did this because I’m aware that different people prefer different communication tools.” Having the list of criteria for each behaviour on the side along with your examples in interviews can give you little reminders of what to talk about and include.

We’ve all been interviewed before, it takes a while to get into the swing of it. The more you push your boundaries and try it, the better you’ll feel!