Perceptions of Autistic and Non-Autistic Adults in Employment Interviews: The Role of Behavioural Impression Management and Interview Structure, 2019-2022

Unless appropriate adaptations are made, social communication and interaction differences mean that employment interviews can be particularly challenging for autistic people. This also makes autism a valuable test case for the influence of Impression Management (IM) on interviewer perceptions of candidates. Two studies are reported, investigating: 1) the extent to which behavioral IM influences rater perceptions of autistic and non-autistic mock interview candidates; and 2) the impact of adapting the interview structure to alleviate the social communication challenges faced by autistic interviewees on this. In the first study, the presence of behavioral cues was manipulated for standard mock employment interviews by using either videos (behavioral cues present) or transcripts (behavioral cues absent). Participants with employment interviewing experience rated their overall impression of the candidates (blind to autism diagnosis). In the second study, a new group of raters viewed videos of the autistic candidates being interviewed with either standard (unadapted) interview questions, or with structured questions (adapted to be more supportive). Study 1 results demonstrated that non-autistic (but not autistic) interviewees gained a ‘video advantage’; benefiting from higher confidence and communication skills ratings when assessed by video compared to transcript. Study 2 found that when interviews were adapted, autistic candidates received higher ratings for conscientiousness (compared to when undergoing unadapted interviews). Findings highlight the importance of IM on employer perceptions in job interviews, conditions that may relatively disadvantage some candidates (i.e., in video, or real-world, interviews), and how these differences in IM could be alleviated (i.e., with adapted interview structure).