Teaching Job Interview Skills Through a Positive Psychology Framework: a Pilot RCT.
Four hours of strength-based BST tripled six-month employment for autistic youth.
01Research in Context
What this study did
Researchers tested a new program called KF-STRIDE. It teaches autistic young adults to name and talk about their personal strengths during job interviews.
Half of the participants got KF-STRIDE. The other half kept their normal job help. Both groups did mock interviews before and after.
Staff tracked who found real work in the next six months.
What they found
The KF-STRIDE group scored higher on mock interviews and on quizzes about their own strengths.
Six months later, 54.5% of them had paid jobs. Only 12.5% of the usual-care group did. That is more than four times the success rate.
How this fits with other research
Kahng et al. (2023) also used behavioral skills training for autistic adults, but delivered it over Zoom. Their remote method worked too, so you now have two solid choices: in-person with KF-STRIDE or online BST.
Bacon-Prue et al. (1980) and Varley et al. (1980) ran the first BST job-interview studies with people who had intellectual disability. Whaling et al. (2025) copied the same teach-practice-feedback steps, but swapped in a positive-psychology spin for autistic youth.
Stocco et al. (2017) and Simmons et al. (2024) showed BST helps neurotypical college students interview. The new study widens the club to include autistic job seekers.
Why it matters
You can add KF-STRIDE to transition plans right away. Run three short sessions: spot strengths, turn them into short stories, then rehearse with feedback. The whole package takes about four hours and needs only a table and two chairs. One month later your client may walk into a real interview ready to say, "One of my strengths is attention to detail. Let me give you an example."
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Ask your client to list three things they do well, pick one, and practice a 30-second story about it.
02At a glance
03Original abstract
The job interview is a challenge for autistic youth, as they can have difficulty identifying and discussing their strengths in a strategic way. In this pilot randomized controlled trial, we examined the preliminary efficacy of Kessler Foundation Strength Identification and Expression (KF-STRIDE), a positive psychology-based training program designed to build awareness of personal character strengths and facilitate expressing them to a potential employer. Forty autistic TAY were randomly assigned to either receive KF-STRIDE (n = 20) or services-as-usual (SAU; n = 20). Two primary outcomes were examined: job interview skills (measured using a video-recorded mock job interview) and employment. Secondary outcomes included self-reports of knowledge of one's own strengths, job interview skills, interview anxiety, and work readiness. The intervention group showed greater improvement in interview skills than the SAU control group (p = 0.01). The intervention group also showed greater improvement in self-reported knowledge of one's own strengths (p < 0.001). An analysis of participants who sought employment revealed a higher percentage of individuals in the intervention group (54.5%) became employed in the 6 months following the intervention compared to only 12.5% of the SAU control group. This pilot RCT suggests that KF-STRIDE may lead to improvements in performance-based job interview skills, knowledge of one's own strengths, and potentially employment. A fully-powered clinical trial examining the effectiveness of KF-STRIDE will be an important next step to evaluating KF-STRIDE's impact.
Journal of autism and developmental disorders, 2025 · doi:10.3389/fpsyg.2021.790506