Effects of Practice and Feedback on Interview Performance

Performing well in an interview is of crucial importance to a job seeker. While much advice and training exists regarding interview performance, little is known about what parts of training successfully improve interview skills. This study proposes the following research question: does interview performance improve with practice alone or is some type of feedback required? Participants were split into four treatment groups that either 1) did not practice an interview, 2) practiced an interview, 3) practiced an interview and generated their own self-feedback or 4) practiced an interview and received feedback from a counselor. The study isolates the effects of practice and feedback to demonstrate that increasing levels of practice and feedback produce a pattern of increasing interview ratings. Post-interview anxiety demonstrates a significant negative correlation with interview ratings. Post-interview impression management is significantly related to interview ratings. The counselor treatment group demonstrates significantly lower communications anxiety than the control group. The results of this study suggest that feedback will help improve interview performance beyond that of practice alone and that anxiety and impression management continue to be candidate characteristics of interest when designing interview training programs