OK, you wrote a killer resume, studied the potential Employer, cleaned up your public profiles (LinkedIn, Facebook, etc.), got new corporate clothes and shone your shoes: today is the big day and you are in front of the person who can open the door to your new career, or shut it forever.

You look at your Interviewer straight in the eye, extend your handshake for an open, warm (while professional) salute… and you encounter a cold, distant person that avoids holding eye contact. In fact, the body language of your interviewer appears to indicate she is not enjoying meeting you, ‘having to’ interview you, and it is outright in a hurry to terminate you, even before you got hired.

If you applied for jobs more than once… you probably encountered such a Hiring Manager.

Different Scenario: the Interviewer is full of smiles, says ‘yes’ to all but rushes you, so you get this fatal feeling that she is just ‘making the moves’ without serious interest in getting to know you, but just to ‘approve’ you as quick as possible, only to (in your mind) get rid of you soonest.

At either scenario, you are now rushing for cover, to come up with a new attitude that may change the way your Interviewer sees you.

Although different, both scenarios have the same effect: they get you out of kilter, out of balance, your game-plan is finished, kaput, finito. Good for the Professional Hiring Manager you have in front of you!

You are being tested by professionals.

The first thing is to get you out of your game and your comfort zone, so you react as you will in real life, when things don’t go exactly your way (80% of the time in high energy environments). Once you are ‘naked’ of your rehearsed, studied posture and answers… is when the real interview starts.

What to do: be calm, understand that this is a situation where you have to react with your true instincts and skills. Observe, listen, appraise the situation as presented and provide your best answers (and reactions) while staying in control of yourself. This is a live test of how ‘staying calm while under stress’ means. If you can’t take the heat… get out of the kitchen, and out of the interview.

Then again, if the Interviewer was truly a mean person, or rushed, or just going through the moves without real intention to get to know you, and you reacted as I suggest above, you had nothing to lose.