Martial arts at job interviews

A couple of years ago I attended a course where we practiced and aimed to improve several useful transferable skills. Among the exercises we did was one which was about going into a room, sitting down and answering questions of several interviewers. One of us who was selected for this exercise had been studying a martial art for a long time (I think he did kyokushin karate) and his performance was better than the others' (people not being interviewed were observers). The course leaders said that people studying martial arts are naturally better at interviews and, generally, in stressfull situations.

This was an interesting claim as, at that time, I didn't think much about how martial arts can be useful in everyday life and what we learn in trainings becomes a part of us and we behave according to the learned patterns even when the situation has nothing to do with physical danger or conflict. However, there are conflict situations and situations perceived dangerous by our body when you don't have to use the 'fight-or-flight' instinct literally. An interview can be such situation: it is usually quite stressful and you don't feel comfortable, your body wants to pull you away from there and you start behaving in a not natural way, such as playing with your fingers, not finding a comfortable position on the chair, taking on a defensive posture even when your conscious mind doesn't want all these to be happening.

Trainings are about training your body and, through the body, the mind as well. If a training is good, body and mind develop together and they can exist in harmony even in stressfull situations. So in an interview, your body can 'behave well': you can keep up an upright posture without having to force yourself into 'natural' positions or having to correct your posture when you notice that the upright position is lost. For example, when focusing hard on the interviewer's questions, we naturally tend to lose control over our posture. It was the solution to this in which the person at my course was really good at. He came into the room, shook hands with the interviewers, sat down, kept calm, remained upright and didn't seem nervous at all. He could focus on the questions and he answered them well.

Obviously, there are people who are naturally talented and remain calm even under very stressfull situations but martial arts and a disciplined body and mind can help if you are not like this. I can be nervous when I need to talk to people I have never seen before. I can be very nervous when, in addition to simply talking, they are also testing me. A couple of weeks ago, I went for an interview and even though I didn't get the job because my answers weren't the ones they were looking for, at least I didn't feel very nervous and I didn't start noticing my bad posture and hand positions (i.e. How should I sit? Where and how should my hands be?). I think my posture was generally OK, my voice was relatively calm, it's a shame that the company and me did not match. Next time I will do the same posturewise and try to find a company that needs me and that I really need, too.