You feel it about ten minutes in. The room cools. The interviewer’s energy drops. You hear yourself answer a question and even you don’t believe it.

Most people freeze in that moment. They mentally write the rejection email before they’ve left the building.

But here’s what 20 years and roughly 3,000 interviews of feedback have taught me. The candidates who recover aren’t always the most qualified ones. They’re the ones who recognise the moment, take a breath, and quietly take the room back.

Reading the room while you’re inside it is hard. Even people with excellent self-awareness say things they wish they hadn’t, fumble an answer, or forget a key story. We become lost in ourselves, or worse, we lose the interviewer. And then we want the room to swallow us whole.

So if you ever find yourself in that exact moment, here are five things that genuinely work.

1. Take control of the clock

The strongest interviewers I’ve watched all do the same thing. They use time and control in harmony.

They answer a question inside a 60 to 90 second window, then invite the interviewer back in with a simple line. “Would you like me to go deeper on that?” or “Happy to expand if helpful.”

That single question does three things. It signals you respect their time. It shows you can edit yourself, which is a leadership trait in itself. And it pulls the interviewer back into a conversation, which is what you want, because a conversation is much harder to score against than a monologue.

When the room feels heavy, the temptation is to fill silence with more words. Resist it, shorten your answers, and hand the floor back. The energy lifts almost every time.

2. If you don’t know, say you don’t know

The best interviewers I’ve ever placed do not bluff. Ever.

When they don’t know something, they do one of two things:

1. They offer a thoughtful theoretical answer and label it as such.
2. They pause, acknowledge that they don’t have a strong answer in the moment, and offer to come back with a real one after the interview.

That second move is more powerful than people realise. It signals self-awareness, which hiring managers consistently rank as one of the hardest qualities to find. The Society for Human Resource Management notes that interviews are designed to assess skills, experience and personality together, not just technical knowledge. You’re being evaluated on character at the same time as competence.

Bluffing fails the character test. Saying “I don’t know, but here’s how I’d think about it” almost always passes it.

3. Get personal with the interviewer (within reason)

If the interview has slipped into interrogation mode, ask them this.

“Why did you join Company X, and what do you enjoy most about working here?”

It sounds simple, but it’s actually one of the most reliable circuit-breakers I know.

You’re inviting the interviewer to talk about themselves, which is something almost everyone enjoys. You’re showing genuine curiosity about the culture rather than the brand. And you’re shifting the dynamic from “examiner and examined” into a conversation between two adults trying to work out if they want to spend the next few years in the same building.

It softens the room almost every time.

4. Spend serious time preparing your questions

Most candidates spend hours preparing for questions they cannot predict and almost no time on the questions they fully control. That’s the wrong way around.

Good questions reveal how you think, what you value, and where your head is already going if you got the role. They turn an average interview into a memorable one.

One of my favourites, especially when the room has gone flat, is this. “What are the quick wins you’d want me to tackle in the first 6 to 12 months?”

You then take their answer and use it to position yourself as the person who solves exactly that. Suddenly you’re not a candidate being assessed. You’re a future colleague mapping out the first quarter.

This is well-documented territory. Harvard Business Review found that asking thoughtful questions makes the hiring manager feel more engaged and more likely to view a candidate favourably, while giving the candidate better information about the role. The lesson is simple. Don’t save your questions for the end, but rather as a tool throughout.

5. Ask for feedback in the room

This is the one most people are too uncomfortable to do, but it’s the one that has saved more interviews than any other.

If you’re sitting there at the end thinking you have a 50-50 chance, ask this. “Do you have any feedback for me from this conversation?”

Some interviewers will give it. Some won’t. Either way, you’ve done something important.

Once you walk out of that room, you lose the ability to influence the narrative. If you missed mentioning a key skill or fumbled an answer about something you’ve actually done well, that gap stays in their head until the decision is made. Asking for feedback in the room is your one shot to correct it before it hardens into a no.

In 20 years, I have never once had a hiring manager mark a candidate down for asking. Not once. Some have admired it. Most have respected it. And many have used the moment to give the candidate a second chance to address something the candidate didn’t even know was a concern.

It takes nerve. It’s worth it.

The wider point

The job market in this region has shifted. Being qualified is no longer the golden ticket it used to be. Hiring managers are weighing personality, presence, and how you carry yourself in difficult moments at least as heavily as your CV.

That’s why how you behave when an interview is going badly matters more than how you perform when it’s going well. Anyone can be impressive when the energy is right. Recovering from a difficult moment, with grace and without panic, is what separates the candidates who get the offer from the ones who get the polite rejection email.

The same principles apply long before you walk into the room. Your professional presence and reputation are now built well before the first handshake, and how you show up online influences how interviewers perceive you in person. Equally, in a market where a growing number of candidates are leaning heavily on AI to get themselves in the door, the human moments are what genuinely differentiate you. Self-awareness, curiosity, and the ability to recover under pressure cannot be generated by a tool. They can only be demonstrated by you, in the room.

So, if you find yourself in an interview that isn’t going your way, don’t write the rejection email in your head. Use one of these. Then another. Then another.

You’d be surprised how often the interview you thought was lost becomes the offer you didn’t see coming.