The Use of Social Skills Training to Improve Interview Skills of Visually Impaired Young Adults: A Pilot Study

Social skills training was investigated as a treatment strategy for improving the verbal job interview behaviors of four visually handicapped young adult males. Training took place on the campus of a state residential school for the blind in a classroom designed to resemble an office. A combination of instructions, modeling, behavior rehearsal, and constructive feedback was used in training students to give positive personal and job-related information, and to ask relevant questions. To examine the effectiveness of training, students were pre- and post-interviewed by employers in local businesses who had extensive experience in interviewing youth. Interview sessions were tape recorded. Observers scored the frequency of occurence of the three target behaviors, and increased rates of positive interview behaviors were obtained for all four students during training. Students transferred acquired behaviors in a follow-up interview with an actual employer. The results suggest that a social skills training package may be effective in increasing certain verbal behaviors of severely visually handicapped young adults during the job interview. Further, findings support the theory that programs serving low-incidence populations may need to include role-playing and modeling in their job-training programs.