An evaluation of the efficacy and social validity of interview skills training for college students

Recruiters report that interview performance is more influential than background or experience when deciding to hire a candidate (Perry & Goldberg, 1998). Despite the importance of interview performance, there is little behavior analytic research investigating how to improve interview skills. We evaluated the effects and social acceptability of a training model on the interview skills of college students. Individualized target skills (e.g., answers to questions) were identified based on participant reports, expert opinions, and performance during mock interviews. We used a multiple baseline design across skills to sequentially train skills. Training included instructing, modeling, role playing, reflecting (i.e., participants wrote brief summaries of how they performed during role-plays), and feedback. We used pre- and post-training mock interviews to assess the effects of training on interview performance. Mock interviews were based on job advertisements that the participants sent to the experimenter before the start of sessions. Results showed that participants improved on all targeted interview skills and that they were satisfied with the training procedures and outcomes. Additionally, experts consistently gave higher ratings to performance during post-training mock interviews