[ryandrake]

Take breaks as you talk! Pause in silence. Whether you are giving a technical answer, or answering a behavioral/scenario question, make it a conversation with pauses and opportunities for your interviewer to help steer.

As an interviewer, the worst candidates are the ones who just launch into a stream of words, talking and talking and talking with no break. Just a continuous stream of consciousness or memorized prepared pitch. Especially for the really open ended questions! It should be a conversation, not a one-way word salad.

I've had candidates answer the simple "Tell me about your background" question with a continuous 10-minute stream of words. I've more than once had to physically wave my hands and flag them down to stop. I've had a candidate who misheard part of my question and started answering something I never asked, and the candidate never provided an "in" for me to provide a correction and turn them in the right direction. Just non-stop words with no breaks. So many candidates do this. I don't know--are interview prep guides telling them this is a good strategy? It's not!

[adamhi]

This is good advice. You should almost always be talking more slowly and taking more breaks than you want to, if you're nervous. Pause between sentences, and even just try to pronounce words more slowly. You'll seem less nervous, and you'll be less nervous, and as a result of this you will think more clearly as well as have more time to consider what you're saying.

[noneeeed]

We are doing graduate/junior interviews at the moment and the first one was just like this. He was like a politician with prepared points he wanted to make and would reel them off after hearing some key word in s question. Thankfully that was in the first half hour screening interview.