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Programme: accepted abstracts

Abstract ID: 535

Part of Session 153: Working in the City (Other abstracts in this session)

Who gets the job? Interactional study of job interviews and workplace ideologies

Authors: Kirilova, Marta
Submitted by: Kirilova, Marta (University of Copenhagen, Denmark)

When job candidates try to achieve the goal of paid labour, job interviews are regarded as one of the most significant interventions. Ideally, a job interview’s purpose is to secure the match of each candidate’s qualifications and personality with the demands of the workplace which he or she is applying at.  Yet, especially when it comes to candidates with a foreign background, the evaluation of qualifications and personality seems to be influenced by a certain public discourse of growing stereotypes and negative attitudes towards candidates with non-Western cultural and linguistic behavior. This public discourse is a huge intervention for both parts:  while the employers tackle it by drawing on gate-keeping strategies, the candidates strive to present an identity that the employers appreciate of. However, if candidates try too hard on an identity that they believe leads them to the job, it will stigmatize them even more, and in the end, cost them the job.

This paper is based on a qualitative study of 40 authentic job interviews with non-native job candidates for both academic and non-academic positions in the public sector in Copenhagen, Denmark. It draws upon the theory and methods of Interactional Sociolinguistics (e.g. Gumperz 1982, Erickson and Schultz 1982, Auer 1998, Roberts & Sarangi 1999, Rampton 2006). It also includes discursive studies in attitudes and ideologies (Billig 1996 &2002, Blommaert 2005) and interactional studies of language attitudes (Liebscher and Dailey-O’Cains 2009). 

The analysis demonstrates how job interviews can be successively accessed through an interactional micro perspective and an ideological macro standpoint, thus illustrating how job candidates’ struggle to be seen as both what they are and what they are not, is deeply rooted in the “outside” mindset. 

Auer, P. (1998): Learning how to play the game: an investigation of role-played job interviews in East Germany’ Text 18:17-3

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Billig, M. (2002):  Ideology, language and discursive psychology. In Ideology and Postmodernity, ed. S. Malesevic and I. Mackenzie. London: Pluto Press (pp. 134-156).

Blommaert, J. (2005): Discourse: A critical introduction  Cambridge University Press 

Gumperz, J. (1982): Discourse Strategies. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
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Liebscher, G. and Dailey-O’Cain, J.(2009): Language Attitudes in Interaction.  In: Journal of Sociolinguistics 13, 2: 195-222
Rampton, B. (2006): Language in Late Modernity: Interaction in an Urban School Cambridge: Cambridge University Press 
Sarangi and Roberts, eds. ( 1999):  Talk, Work and Institutional Order  Berlin: Mouton de Gruyter