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Research questions: • To what extent does relatedness satisfaction within AVIs affect applicant reactions and applicant performance? • To what extent does receiving personalised content within an AVI satisfy applicants’ relatedness need satisfaction, and affect applicant reactions? • To what extent does need satisfaction predict how positive or negative an applicant’s written review of an organisation is after completing an AVI? Context: Asynchronous Video Interviews (AVIs) are a relatively new assessment and selection technology, allowing organisations to evaluate large numbers of applicants more efficiently and at lower cost than face to face (F2F) interviews. AVI use has increased substantially in recent years, brought on in part by COVID-19 which saw unemployment rates rise rapidly in a short period of time, combined with social distancing measures. While AVIs offer tangible benefits to both organisations and applicants, technology-mediated interviews are not necessarily equivalent to their F2F counterparts in terms of applicant reactions (job applicants’ attitudes towards the hiring process and organisation), and how applicants’ interview performances are evaluated. One common complaint from applicants (often seen on online sites such as the r/recruiting hell subreddit) is that AVIs feel “impersonal” and give the impression that the organisation is not investing much time or effort into the “interview” process. In this experiment, we will be manipulating the level of “personalised” content delivered to participants completing an AVI as part of a fictional application process. We aim to see if adding personalised elements to an AVI can improve the AVI experience and make it feel more “personal” and more effortful on the part of the organisation. In addition, it is relatively easy for applicants to write and publish complaints, grievances, or negative opinions about an application process online (using review sites such as Seek, Glassdoor, or online forumns such as Reddit, etc.). Any such negative “reviews” could be potentially damaging to an organisation’s reputation, and may deter job seekers from applying for a role with the organisation. In this study, we will be asking participants to write a “review” about their candidate experience so far with the fictitious organisation, and using LIWC (Linguisic Inquiry & Word Count; Pennebaker, Boyd, Jordan, & Blackburn, 2015) to analyse the percentage of positive and negative words contained within these reviews. As most “applicant reactions” researched in the literature are subjective measures (participant/applicant ratings of perceived fairness, anxiety, organisational attraction, etc.) analysing the positive and negative emotions within text-based reviews could potentially add a behavioural-based “applicant reaction” into the literature, which is measured objectively.

Description: the contextualised version of the study by Dunlop et al (2023).

This is a two-phase between subjects experimental design (2 x 2 x 2). In this study, we aim to examine how volunteer recruitment advertising can set expectations about the volunteer experience, and how different 'first day in the role' volunteer experiences can interact with expectations to determine satisfaction and retention intentions. The context of the study is the "State Emergency Services" which is a volunteer-led organisation with branches all across Australia, whose remit is to provide support to the community during emergencies and disasters. Participants will be recruited from Australia via Prolific. Phase 1 comprises random assignment into one of two groups where participants examine one of two recruitment posters. These posters have been pilot tested, and are designed to set the following expectations about what the volunteering experience with the SES will be like: 'Working in a Team' vs. 'Learning New Skills'. Participants will view one of these posters and be asked to report on what they expect from the volunteering experience, and how attractive that experience seems. Phase 2 comprises random assignment into one of four groups, formed by 2x2-group variables (Experiencing Teamwork vs. not & Experiences Learning New Skills vs not). In this phase, participants are asked to imagine they decided to volunteer and are then 'walked through' a hypothetical first day volunteer experience. The experience they receive will either describe high or low levels of teamwork crossed with either high or low exposure to opportunities to learn new skills. Participants will then be asked to give ratings of their experiences in relation to teamwork, and learning new skills (these are manipulation checks). Then they will be asked to report on the dependent variables. Mediators / manipulation checks include (in Phase 1) - Expectations set (in Phase 2) - Experiences reported The dependent variables are four items: 1 Satisfaction with experience 2 Intention to return for future experience 3 (exploratory) a 5-point 'smiley-face' 4 (exploratory) request for more information about the SES

In this study, we aim to examine, experimentally, whether adding either one of two design features to a forced-choice personality assessment improves applicants' perceptions of self-determination need-support (specifically, autonomy and competence) of respondents. In a simulated job application experiment (i.e. where participants are asked to imagine completing a personality questionnaire for a job application), participants will be assigned to complete a forced choice (FC) personality questionnaire under four conditions, or a Likert personality questionnaire in the fifth. Two of the four FC conditions (the control conditions) will replicate a typical FC experience. In one of these, an extra filler task is also presented to participants. In the other two (experimental) conditions, participants will be informed that they will be given the chance to make some final responses or clarifications about their personality after completing the FC personality questionnaire. In one of these, participants will be able to write some additional statements in a free format, and in the other, participants will be given a fixed format to clarify their personality. We will measure all participants' self-reported autonomy, competence and relatedness (for exploratory purposes) needs support.

This project examines the effects of including a written pledge ("Circle Back") to respond to all candidates to a job (vs. no pledge, vs. a note that only shortlisted applicants will receive a response) in a job advertisement on perceived attractiveness of the job, expectations around treatment by the employer, and willingness to undertake rigorous assessments as part of the application process. The project also examines the interactions of the Circle Back pledge with the gender dominance of the job (male vs. neutral vs. female dominated) and the seniority of the job (entry, mid-tier, senior).

This study aims to use the Theory of Planned Behaviour (Ajzen, 1985) to investigate the factors that contribute towards the use of personality inventories in personnel selection. A vignette study will be used to present participants with information that aims to manipulate their behavioural and norm beliefs, in an attempt to influence their attitudes and subjective norms and in turn their intended use of a personality in a fictional selection scenario.

Online asynchronous video interviews (where a person is ‘interviewed’ online by a computer rather than a person) are often regarded by job applicants as providing negative candidate experiences. In these experiments, we seek to experimentally evaluate two interventions that are grounded in self-determination theory, that are designed to improve the experiences of completing asynchronous interviews. Both experiments are randomized 2-group between subjects designs with experimental and control conditions.

Asynchronous Video Interviews (AVIs) are a relatively new assessment and selection technology, allowing organisations to evaluate large numbers of applicants more efficiently and at lower cost than face to face (F2F) interviews. AVI use has increased substantially in the recent year, brought on by the current COVID-19 recession which has seen unemployment rates rise rapidly in a short period of time, combined with social distancing measures. While AVIs offer tangible benefits to both organisations and applicants, technology-mediated interviews are not necessarily equivalent to their F2F counterparts in terms of applicant reactions (job applicants’ attitudes towards the hiring process and organisation), and how applicants’ interview performances are evaluated. Additionally, current dominant models of applicant reactions may be more suited to investigating applicants’ reactions to an entire selection process, rather than reactions to specific assessments. In my PhD dissertation, of which this experiment forms part, I will present Basic Psychological Needs Theory (BPNP, a sub-theory of self-determination theory (SDT)) as an alternative framework through which to study applicant reactions. This experiment seeks to investigate whether an intervention (a company video message that has been rated by pilot participants as being higher in empathy and humour than the control condition) shown to participants during their AVI can reduce participants’ anxiety levels, improve perceptions of the hiring organisation, as well as their interview performance (as rated by independent interview evaluators). This experiment uses a randomised 2-group between subjects design with an experimental and control condition.

In this study, participants were asked to describe using written text, a person they liked and a person they disliked. Participants also completed a self-report HEXACO100 questionnaire, excluding the altruism items. The written descriptions were coded by three judges, who were asked to identify descriptions that included high levels or low levels of each of the six HEXACO personality dimensions. Judges also identified any descriptions that were particularly vitriolic. All judges were trained in a 2 hour virtual session after reading two articles about the HEXACO model, and completing a set of tests of HEXACO knowledge. In the study, we investigate a set of hypotheses and research questions relating to the traits that are described in liked and disliked people, and how those traits relate to participants' own traits.

• To what extent does relatedness satisfaction within AVIs affect applicant reactions, performance, and anxiety? • If applicants are made aware of specifically who will be evaluating their AVI, to what extent will this affect applicants’ performance, anxiety, and applicant reactions? Asynchronous Video Interviews (AVIs) are a relatively new assessment and selection technology, allowing organisations to evaluate large numbers of applicants more efficiently and at lower cost than face to face (F2F) interviews. AVI use has increased substantially in the recent year, brought on by the current COVID-19 recession which has seen unemployment rates rise rapidly in a short period of time, combined with social distancing measures. While AVIs offer tangible benefits to both organisations and applicants, technology-mediated interviews are not necessarily equivalent to their F2F counterparts in terms of applicant reactions (job applicants’ attitudes towards the hiring process and organisation), and how applicants’ interview performances are evaluated. In this experiment, I will be manipulating the ‘intro’ and ‘outro’ videos during the AVI in a 2x2 factorial between-subjects experimental design. The conditions will be ‘relatedness support’ (high vs neutral) vs “mediated immediacy’ (high vs low). Relatedness support will be manipulated through the inclusion (high) or omission (neutral) of warm, inclusive communication. Mediated immediacy will be manipulated through the video’s presenter identifying themselves as either the applicant’s specific AVI evaluator (high mediated immediacy), or as a generic store team member (low mediated immediacy).

Although they can take on a wide variety of forms and can occur at different parts of a selection process (Anderson & Witvliet, 2008; Posthuma et al., 2014; Ryan et al., 1999), job interviews are perhaps the most common method used to select employees across cultures (Huffcutt & Culbertson, 2011; Macan, 2009). Although research has examined best practice solutions for maximizing the utility of interviews in general (e.g., increasing interview structure; Huffcutt et al., 2013), the importance of cross-cultural considerations has often been overlooked in both research and practice, with much of the best practice research being informed by a more “Western-centric” approach. The purpose of the present white paper is therefore to describe some of the research to date on the role of culture in job interviews, practices in different regions, practical considerations, and next steps. We describe the research on interviews around the world and the implications of these findings in terms of applicant reactions, behaviors, interview use and design, and bias and stigma.

Supporting info item, PER_Open_Practices_Disclosure_Form_PER 2166 for Personality and Integrative Negotiations: A Hexaco Investigation of Actor, Partner, and Actor–Partner Interaction Effects on Objective and Subjective Outcomes by Amistad Clark, Dunlop Patrick D., Ng Ryan, Anglim Jeromy, Fells Ray and Back Mitja in European Journal of Personality

Supporting info item, per2166-sup0001-Data_S1 for Personality and Integrative Negotiations: A Hexaco Investigation of Actor, Partner, and Actor–Partner Interaction Effects on Objective and Subjective Outcomes by Amistad Clark, Dunlop Patrick D., Ng Ryan, Anglim Jeromy, Fells Ray and Back Mitja in European Journal of Personality