Imagine a Virtual Reality (VR) simulation in which you can speak in front of a panel of interviewers. All of those faces in front of you may not be real, but the 360-film footage and audio will trick your brain into firing up all of those familiar nerves, invoking what the VR industry is calling “presence.”
The idea is to create a virtual experience that mimics the real world setting or event to such a degree that it simultaneously triggers psychological conditions like anxiety, self-consciousness, and spatial awareness. The user can not only practice their speech, but also their orientation, their posture and gestures, and how they interact with the interviewers.
This would let the user rehearse and prepare for a speaking engagement of any kind, be it a job interview or a board room presentation, in a way that dramatically cuts the learning curve and enhances performance.
Competencies VR is specially designed to improve job interview performance by targeting the following domains recommended by the expert panel, which were grouped into (a) job relevant interview content, and (b) interviewee performance constructs. The job relevant interview content includes: conveying oneself as a hard worker (dependable), sounding easy to work with (teamwork), conveying that one behaves professionally, and negotiating a workable schedule. Interviewee performance includes: sharing things in a positive way, sounding honest, sounding interested in the position, and establishing overall rapport with the interviewer.
Competencies VR uses the following strategies to target improvement in the aforementioned domains:
- Providing repeatable VR interviews,
- Offering in-the-moment feedback,
- Displaying scores on key dimensions of performance, and
- Allowing review of audio and written transcripts colour coded for strong, neutral or weak interview responses.
Competencies VR also enables users to review a transcript of every simulated question and response, which indicates why responses were appropriate/inappropriate and gives related advice to the users. The transcripts can be reviewed using an audio format where they can hear themselves respond to questions (if users used speech recognition). Following each simulated interview, users are also provided feedback on why certain training objectives received a particular score.
There are additional features that individualize the Competencies VR learning experience. To promote hierarchical learning, the simulated interviews have multiple difficulty levels. Also, the app continually evolves so the questions may change depending on the user’s prior responses and the rapport that has been established. This emotional realism creates a dynamic experience in which the users sees the questions become easier when responded to honestly and correctly. These features, taken together with the scope of Competencies VR main components, provide a comprehensive and interactive learning experience for practicing and performing a successful job interview.
Note: Some of the above features are under test and are available only at our Experience Centre.