Distressed and Distracted by COVID-19 During High-Stakes Virtual Interviews: The Role of Job Interview Anxiety on Performance and Reactions

Julie M. McCarthy, Donald M. Truxillo, Talya N. Bauer, Berrin Erdogan, Yiduo Shao, Mo Wang, Joshua Liff, Cari Gardner

Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

Abstract

Employers have increasingly turned to virtual interviews to facilitate online, socially distanced selection processes in the face of the COVID-19 pandemic.However, there is little understanding about the experience of job candidates in these virtual interview contexts.We draw fromEvent System Theory (Morgeson et al., 2015) to advance and test a conceptual model that focuses on a high-stress, high-stakes setting and integrates literatures on workplace stress with literatures on applicant reactions.We predict that when applicants ruminate about COVID-19 during an interview and have higher levels of COVID-19 exhaustion, they will have higher levels of anxiety during virtual interviews, which in turn relates to reduced interview performance, lower perceptions of fairness, and reduced intentions to recommend the organization. Further, we predict that three factors capturing COVID-19 as an enduring and impactful event (COVID-19 duration, COVID-19 cases, COVID-19 deaths) will be positively related to COVID-19 exhaustion. We tested our propositions with 8,343 job applicants across 373 companies and 93 countries/regions. Consistent with predictions, we found a positive relationship between COVID-19 rumination and interview anxiety, and this relationship was stronger for applicants who experienced higher (vs. lower) levels of COVID-19 exhaustion. In turn, interview anxiety was negatively related to interview performance, fairness perceptions, and recommendation intentions. Moreover, using a relevant subset of the data (n = 6,136), we found that COVID-19 duration and deaths were positively related to COVID-19 exhaustion.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)1103-1117
Number of pages15
JournalJournal of Applied Psychology
Volume106
Issue number8
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 2021
Externally publishedYes

Keywords

  • Anxiety
  • Covid-19
  • Exhaustion
  • Interview performance
  • Virtual interviews

Fingerprint

Dive into the research topics of 'Distressed and Distracted by COVID-19 During High-Stakes Virtual Interviews: The Role of Job Interview Anxiety on Performance and Reactions'. Together they form a unique fingerprint.

Cite this