TY - JOUR
T1 - Distressed and Distracted by COVID-19 During High-Stakes Virtual Interviews
T2 - The Role of Job Interview Anxiety on Performance and Reactions
AU - McCarthy, Julie M.
AU - Truxillo, Donald M.
AU - Bauer, Talya N.
AU - Erdogan, Berrin
AU - Shao, Yiduo
AU - Wang, Mo
AU - Liff, Joshua
AU - Gardner, Cari
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2021 American Psychological Association
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - 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.
AB - 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.
KW - Anxiety
KW - Covid-19
KW - Exhaustion
KW - Interview performance
KW - Virtual interviews
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85114847322&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1037/apl0000943
DO - 10.1037/apl0000943
M3 - Article
C2 - 34423997
AN - SCOPUS:85114847322
SN - 0021-9010
VL - 106
SP - 1103
EP - 1117
JO - Journal of Applied Psychology
JF - Journal of Applied Psychology
IS - 8
ER -