Using Web-Based Behavioral Skills Training to Teach Online Interview Skills to College Students
Live Zoom BST quickly teaches college students online interview skills that last and transfer.
01Research in Context
What this study did
The team ran a Zoom class to teach college students how to shine in online job interviews.
They used Behavioral Skills Training: explain, show, practice, give feedback.
Skills were taught one at a time and measured until each student hit mastery.
What they found
Every student got better at eye contact, clear answers, and tech setup.
The gains stuck when tested later and carried over to new interviewers.
Students said the training felt useful and realistic.
How this fits with other research
Slane et al. (2021) looked at 20 earlier BST studies and found the same pattern: explain, model, practice, feedback works for almost any skill.
Kahng et al. (2023) used the same Zoom BST package with adults with autism and saw the same jump in interview skills, so the method crosses diagnoses.
Edgemon et al. (2020) got similar results with teens in detention, but some needed extra prompts. The new study shows college kids move faster, likely because they already know Zoom.
Why it matters
You can run a full BST loop in one live web session. Record the call, clip the model examples, and reuse them for the next client. No travel, no printouts, same payoff.
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02At a glance
03Original abstract
Behavioral Skills Training (BST) is an effective procedure for teaching new skills, like interview skills. BST typically includes instruction, modeling, rehearsal, and feedback. Multiple studies have demonstrated that BST can be used in a web-based context, but no studies, to our knowledge, have extended the literature by using BST to teach online interview skills. This study extended and replicated previous research on teaching interview skills with BST by using this procedure to teach interview skills to college students in a synchronous web-based video format. We evaluated the intervention using a multiple baseline design across targets with follow-up sessions testing for maintenance and generalization. All participant performance improved from baseline to post-training across all targeted dependent variables. Participants also rated social validity measures highly, aligning with previous research. Implications, limitations, and future directions are discussed.
Journal of Organizational Behavior Management, 2024 · doi:10.1080/01608061.2023.2219466