Landing your next big role can be hard work. Not only do you have to send out your C.V., you’ve got to work out how to interview well once you get in the door. Interviewing is one of the core skills of job-hunting, and if you don’t get it right it can really hit you in the confidence.

Here are my top 5 tips to make sure you nail your next job interview.

Having worked in recruitment a little while now, I’ve seen this happen time and time and time again. A lot of candidates seem to be perfectly suited to roles we hire for. Not only do they have the experience but they can speak confidently to their experience as well, which is what an interview essentially is. However, as soon as we get these candidates into discussing what their interview will be like, they turn to nervous wrecks!

Interviews are not meant to be like army bootcamps, designed to separate “the few and the brave”. Interviews are meant to be places where you can share stories, talk about your experience and have people understand whether you’ll be a good fit for the company. They’re not there to bring you down, they’re simply there to meet you in person. So please, just relax. Everything will be just fine.

Following on from the first statement, it’s easy to use that nervous energy you might have saved up to go on a tangent, and to eventually speak out of nervousness. This nervous talk leads to “waffling” speech, which is a tendency to fill your statements with excess words, go on tangents and repeat yourself. If you can, try to be as concise as possible with your speech.

This tip especially applies to those that are working in the digital space. Digital is an incredibly fast-moving environment. Those that have worked in the space will note that it’s difficult to maintain knowledge at the leading edge, and by extension, who you are now is not who you will be in a few years. Try to paint a picture of where you see your career moving to, that way the interviewer will be able to understand what your motivations are coming in to work.

We aren’t talking in terms of literally painting a picture. What you need to do is to use descriptive language when describing yourself. Telling a story of something you’ve done is very important if you want to substantiate a claim you have made about yourself.

Not only does it make you stand out, but if you can use descriptive language to describe events in your past, you can interview incredibly well. Most candidates don’t describe what their experiences have been like. Call on your inner Bob Ross if you have too.

If you really want to stand out from the crowd, the best thing you can do is talk about your achievements, not the results. Most candidates get confused about distinguishing the two. A result is something that happened, an achievement is how you contributed to the result.

If you can relax, tell a story about your work and paint a picture of where you are going, you can interview well. If the interviewer knows that you can see where you are going, and they can also see where you are going (to paraphrase the best bumper sticker of the 1990’s); Magic Happens .