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Composing written responses to interview questions works because it helps candidates learn and remember concepts and content, improve thinking and cognitive abilities, organize their thoughts, enhance communication skills, bolster their self-image, and make connections. Demonstrating thoughtfulness and organized thinking is positively associated with interview performance, according to a study by Maurer, Solamon, Andrews, and Troxtel. Noting that cognitive ability in applicants has been shown to be a "strong and consistent predictor of job performance," and, in fact, to predict job performance more "accurately and universally" than other constructs (largely because this ability indicates candidates’ ability to rapidly learn job requirements), Huffcutt, Roth, and McDaniel posit that applicants with higher cognitive ability may exhibit greater effectiveness than other candidates in responding to situational and abstract questions. Writing-to-Learn’s claims to help its practitioners organize their thoughts and make connections suggests that the Writing-to-Learn approach would be one way to sharpen communicative abilities for interviewing.
New Research
We tested this Writing-to-Learn approach to interview prep on three
sections of a basic marketing class consisting mainly of college juniors,
with a small number of sophomores and seniors also participating. Students
in the sections who were assigned to complete the written interview-preparation
assignment were given a list of 20 common interview questions for college
students and asked to submit written responses to each. A local human-resources
professional with many years of interviewing experience was recruited to
interview and score the participants. He was instructed on how to complete
the evaluation forms, but at no time did he know that one group of interviewees
had previously prepared written responses to the potential questions and that the
other group hadn’t. The group that prepared the written responses to the
interview questions scored higher on the study’s evaluation instrument than the
group that did not. Although the difference we saw did not prove to be
statistically significant, it may be trend-indicative.
Based on the possible trend indication of the study, as well as previous scholarly dealing with interview preparation and Writing-to-Learn, we are confident of the relationship between written interview preparation and interview success. We are committed to the idea that preparing written answers to common interview questions will make job-seekers more confident and allow them to focus their energies on other aspects of the interview while providing detailed, yet concise responses to questions.
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