Time to hide under the blanket

Oh dear. I absolutely BOMBED my interview on Friday. Four interviews back-to-back, and I bombed two of them. Doesn't bode well for my job prospects, does it?

Have you ever had a conversation where you just could not connect at all with the person you were speaking to? That's what my the first interview was like. She'd ask a question, and before I'd barely begun to answer, she'd look bored or distracted or impatient. Maybe it was a ruse to put me on the defensive and test me in awkward situations. But that would be crediting the game with undue sophistication. No - I think she was genuinely a disinterested interviewer, and I could not bridge the chasm and build a bond. No smile of encouragement or nod of affirmation, no "un huh" to show she was listening, infact no helpful feedback at all from her. The correct stance, of course, would have been to have more confidence in myself and plough through regardless. But inevitably, I felt myself getting nervous, and could hear my answers getting shorter and shorter until we were both speaking in bullet points.
Interviewer: "So can you tell me about a project you've worked on?"
Me: "Well, I worked independently on the roll out of a mentoring progr - "
Interviewer: (gazing out through the glass door and waving at a passerby)
Me: "The program took three months to implement and I was responsible for the entire project from its inception to the final implementation and evaluation."
Interviewer: "Oh okay that's it? Well why don't you tell me about a time when..."
And that was what the conversation was reduced to.

And then there was a case study. In my defence, I made a valiant effort to answer the questions as best I could. In the offense, my best effort just wasn't good enough. And ofcourse, as soon as I left the room, I could think of another thousand things I should have said. I should have covered the points on communication. I should have structured my answers better. I should have said the most important things in the beginning, rather than slipping them in the end. I should have...

Oh dear. Its a slippery slope of thought. Why should we be made to get nervous because of other people's styles? Why is it so easy for someone else's over-confidence to throw my confidence off the track? Why did I have to get the coldest and briskest interviewers from the lot? Why couldn't I answer the case study questions well enough?

If I'm honest with myself, I've exaggerated the ogre-liness of the interviewers and the questions because this is the first time I've ever come out of an interview feeling so inadequate. It's the first time I've ever felt like I could not provide satisfactory answers to the questions, and that I could not make any sort of human connection with the interviewers - and I just don't know how to deal with it myself. It makes me realise how I've always taken for granted my ability to rise to the occasion and perform under pressure. And now, suddenly, I have to deal with this sense of failure and inadequacy. I think I'm going to hide for a bit.