A team of researchers at Hiroshima University have published a study that examines the impact of a job interviewees gaze during a video interview and the impact it can have on whether they land the job or not. The team’s work is described in a recent article published in Scientific Reports.
With the rise of remote communication and virtual work, the role of virtual job interviews has become nothing short of a commonplace fixture in the job market. Whether an in-person interview is even scheduled, virtual interviews are something many job applicants are likely to experience. In fact, many tips, tricks, and guides have emerged; just do a quick Google search, and you’ll soon find a long list of articles with information on how to ace a virtual job interview.
And yet, how does a person’s presence in a virtual job interview actually impact their performance in the interview and the interviewer’s perception of the applicant? Researchers at Hiroshima University conducted a study to better understand how the applicant’s gaze impacts perception of the applicant in an interview. To test the impact of where person looked during the interview, researchers conducted mock interviews where potential job applicants conducted an interview by look directly at the camera or looking at the screen. Then, researchers created three different options for 38 full-time workers to review: the version of the interviewee looking at the camera, looking at the screen, or an audio-only option. The full-time workers (the hypothetical interviewer) were asked to score the interviewee on the following criteria:
- Intimacy
- Social desirability
- General job abilities
- Decisiveness
- Cooperativeness
- Overall hireability
Generally speaking, researchers found that those who looked at the camera scored better by the “interviewer” compared to those who looked directly at the screen. Interestingly, interviewers scored the voice-only options higher compared to those that looked at the screen. The conclusion? Researchers suspect that looking into the camera is the virtual equivalent of eye contact, which makes a big impact.
Sources: Science Daily; Scientific Reports