Telling stories to communicate the value of the pre‐employment structured job interview

Abstract

In an effort to bridge the scientist–practitioner gap in the employee selection, some researchers have advocated telling stories to better communicate the value of evidence‐based hiring practices to human resource (HR) professionals. In this paper, we conducted two experiments that examine the efficacy of storytelling for overcoming managers’ resistance to use structured job interviews. In two experiments, we found that participants who read a story regarding the effectiveness of structured interviews, as opposed to receiving evidence‐based advice, reported more favorable attitudes toward structured job interviews. Serial mediation analysis revealed that the observed attitude change was mediated by an increase in narrative transportation and reduction in counterarguing. Implications for using stories in communicating the value of evidence‐based HR practices are discussed.

Implementing evidence-based assessment and selection in organizations: A review and an agenda for future research

“…In a second study, experienced hiring professionals (N ¼ 197), reported their attitudes toward the structured interview before and after reading a similar script as in study 1 (Zhang et al, 2019). Compared to a pretest, attitudes toward the structured interview increased slightly after reading either of the scripts (d ¼ 0.22), and the effect was slightly stronger for participants who read the story (no effect sizes reported).…”

“…Examples of presentation formats are nontraditional metrics, graphical visual aids, and narrative stories. Theoretical perspectives on why these alternative presentation formats would improve validity communication were, except for two studies (Highhouse et al, 2017;Zhang et al, 2019), not explicitly described. All of these studies communicated the advantage of structured-over unstructured interviews.…”

“…Transportation theory (Green & Brock, 2000) suggests that stories transport the reader's focus to the story's character rather than the persuasive message. This may reduce the reader's counter arguing and in turn increase positive attitudes toward evidence-based assessment (Zhang et al, 2019).…”

“…To investigate these hypotheses, Zhang et al (2019) presented a sample of adults (N ¼ 253) recruited via MTurk with a script that described a structured interview and reasons for its underutilization. Participants either read a story in which an I/O consultant described the development and implementation of a structured interview for a company without mentioning that it was superior, or a script in which structured interviews were clearly recommended based on their superiority compared to unstructured interviews.…”

Landing on the wrong planet: Practical guidance for bridging the gap between I-O psychology and key stakeholders

“…For instance, being able to present data that demonstrate how the effectiveness of antiharassment or antidiscrimination training improved retention and reduced organizational litigation costs and reputation costs can be extremely powerful. However, recent studies have shown that presenting data by itself can limit its persuasiveness and using storytelling can ensure that the central message is memorable and is more likely to elicit behavioral change (e.g., Zak, 2014;Zhang et al, 2019). Being able to incorporate character-driven stories that clearly show the impact of the prevention trainings and elicit emotional responses from the listeners can go a long way for organizational stakeholders to understand the analytics as well as personally react to the message (see Chapter 17 in Guenole et al, 2017, for best practices on storytelling with data).…”