How Prompting for Maximal Performance and Preparation Time Influence Interview Performance, Validity and Response Content in Past Behavior Questions

In selection interviews, past behavior questions (PBQs) invite interviewees to tell a story showcasing their competence. Yet many responses reflect typical rather than maximal performance, creating a selection risk when raters undervalue interviewees whose best performance exceeds their everyday level. Prior work shows that rewording PBQs to prompt maximal performance improves interview performance. We extend this work by examining how maximal-performance prompting changes the way interviewees answer, focusing on storytelling and evaluative tone, and by testing whether preparation time provides additional support. In a 2 × 2 experiment, participants completed a mock asynchronous video interview (N = 274), answering three PBQs under limited versus unlimited preparation time and with either traditional or maximal-performance wording. Interviewees reported honest and deceptive impression management (IM) and job performance (task and contextual). Raters assessed interview performance. Responses were coded for stories and pseudo-stories, and evaluative tone was analyzed using Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count 2022. Maximal-performance wording improved interview performance, increased story production, and elicited more positive and negative tone. Preparation time had no effect on performance or storytelling, and IM did not vary across condition. Interview performance was associated with contextual performance, but this relation was weaker with unlimited preparation time and maximal-performance wording.