Essay: Mismatches in intercultural selection interviews

Abstract
The tendency towards increasing diversity in the present-day labor market worldwide demands equal treatment of all the candidates in cross-cultural employee recruitment and selection context. In spite of this, the demand is not being adequately met due to the fact that in most cases neither the staffing supervisors nor the job applicants possess enough knowledge of pragmatic intricacies of such a type of gatekeeping encounters that they simply are not able to co-construct a successful outcome of the interview due to them having differing sociocultural backgrounds. Such biases have a deleterious impact on the result of the interview, even though the candidate fulfills all the necessary occupational requirements. This paper seeks to remedy these problems by examining relevant literature, concerning theoretical frameworks for evaluating such mismatches in intercultural selection interviews and provides a comprehensive analysis of an empirical investigation of job interviews in a cross-cultural environment.
Keywords: gatekeeping encounters, cultural mismatch, miscommunication, institutional discourse, interactional sociolinguistics, recruitment
Miscommunication in the Gatekeeping Encounters: Cultural Mismatch Revealed in Job Interviews
In the new global economy that is defined by the rapid development of complicated international social and political institutions, and the subsequent internationalization of labor markets, the job interview has become the key instrument of determining people’s access to the institutional privileges (Kuptsch & Martin, 2010). It can therefore be assumed that in a certain way the employment interviews represent a “gateway” (or “gatekeeping encounters”) to the organization and the benefits it offers, and in such a setting the interviewers play the role of so-called “gatekeepers” (Kerekes, 2006; 2007).
Notwithstanding the fact that the recruitment interview is a multi-stage process, the preliminary phase usually consists of the interviewer assessing the behavior and personality of the candidate to determine whether they are eligible to gain the access to a particular institution (DuBord, 2014).
Conducting a job interview in a multicultural and/or multilingual setting is an especially challenging task owing to the fact that the issues of potential miscommunication are more prevalent due to many linguistic and extralinguistic (contextual) factors. One of them being the inherent asymmetry of an employment interview in its traditional sense (Ammon, Dittmar, Mattheier, & Trudgill, 2004) caused by the interviewer withholding all the power and thus defining the interaction, and aggravated when the interviewee is a representative of a different culture, or does not share the same linguistic background with the interviewer, i.e. does not speak the dominant language as his mother-tongue or speaks a non-mainstream variety of the dominant language (DuBord, 2010; 2014).
However, what is particularly notable about this aggravation is that according to various studies it can be successfully mitigated even when the uncontrollable social characteristics (differing cultural backgrounds in this case) are not shared by the gatekeeper and the gatekeepee (or the interlocutors) (Kerekes, 2006).
In Russia, the challenge of intercultural recruitment is still yet to be recognized. Irrespective of the long multicultural and multilingual history of the country, presently cross-cultural competences are not considered an integral part of the academic development of Russian HR-managers (whom we may consider as potential gatekeepers), even though the level of interest towards studying cross-cultural communication among the students of Human Resources Management programs is quite high (Guskova, 2017). As for the majority of potential Russian “gatekeepee” (or potential candidates for a job in an intercultural setting), neither are they exposed to the pragmatics of a cross-cultural job interview throughout their formal education (Davydkina, 2009).
Statement of the Problem
Along with this rise in the level of internationalization of labor market in Russia, there is an increasing need in specialists who possess certain cross-cultural competences which above all enable them to successfully manage stressful gatekeeping encounters, such as job interviews, in an unfamiliar intercultural setting. The need can be satisfied by investigating current issues concerning miscommunication that arise concurrently with the cross-cultural recruitment process and identifying the main strategies that can help to diminish their influence on the gatekeepee’s performance.
Purpose of the Study
It is the purpose of this study to explore the linguistic and contextual factors that contribute to cultural mismatch and miscommunication in the cross-cultural employee recruitment and selection process. The following shall be achieved through a thorough analysis of pertinent literature, and a comprehensive analysis of an empirical investigation of job interviews in a cross-cultural environment as intercultural gatekeeping encounters.
Research Question
For the purpose of this study, the following question were addressed:
1. What are the main explanatory frameworks for analyzing mismatches in intercultural selection interviews?
2. According to the relevant literature, what can be defined as the main features of the performance of a native speaker of English applying for the position of Teacher of English in a job interview, since they do share some linguistic and contextual background with the gatekeeper?
3. According to the results of the empirical examination, what are the main features of miscommunication during a job interview of a non-native speakers of English applying for the position of Teacher of English, since they do share some part of the linguistic and contextual background with the gatekeeper?
Definition of Terms
1. Gatekeeping encounters — “asymmetric speech situations during which a person who represents a social institution seeks to gain information about the lives, beliefs, and practices of people outside of that institution in order to warrant the granting of an institutional privilege” (Schiffrin, 1994).
2. Interview — “as an interrogative encounter between someone who has the right or privilege to know and another in a less powerful position who is obliged to respond, rather defensively, to justify his/her action, to explain his/her problems, to give up him/herself for evaluation” (Akinnaso & Ajirotutu, 1982, pp. 119-20).
3. Co-membership — “an aspect of performed social identity that involves particularistic attributes of status shared by the counselor and student – for example, race and ethnicity, sex, interest in football, graduation from the same high school, acquaintance with the same individual” (Erickson & Shultz, 1982).
4. Trust — “is an expectancy held by an individual or a group that the word, promise, verbal or written statement of another individual or a group can be relied on” (Wright & Sharp, 1979).
5. Rapport (solidarity) — is an indirect way of “getting one’s way not because one demanded it (power) but because the other person wanted the same thing (solidarity)” (Tannen, 1990).
Literature Review
The analytic apparatus of the early researches on selection interviews was primarily focused on the issues of unequal power dynamics such as the inherent imbalance and asymmetry in the interaction between interviewers and candidates (e.g. Akinnaso & Ajirotutu, 1982; Gumperz, 1992). As defined in the aforementioned investigations, asymmetrical interaction implies a type of interaction in which “one interlocutor (the gatekeeper) has the authority to judge and determine the future of the other interlocutor (the gatekeepee)” (Kerekes, 2007, p. 1943). Thus, the gatekeepers are characterized by dominating, controlling, and defining the interaction and, above all, assessing the candidates who are depicted incapable of controlling the interaction and most likely to be ineligible to be allowed “through the gates of the institution”, particularly when “social inequality is ritually dramatized” and “basic differences in class, ethnicity, access to power and knowledge, and culturally specific discourse conventions mediate the interaction between participants” (Akinnaso & Ajirotutu, 1982, p. 120). In this manner, the success of an intercultural gatekeeping encounter depends on the compatibility of interlocutors’ interactional styles (Kerekes, 2007). In other words, two interlocutors who have in common the same native language and/or cultural background are more compatible in a gatekeeping encounter than those who do not share these characteristics. Hence, conforming with this theory, the compatible interlocutors more likely to avoid miscommunication, than are interlocutors who have never coexisted in similar linguistic and/or cultural contexts.
Other investigations view interviews as fairly equal encounters and acknowledge the importance of co-constructing co-membership, trust, and solidarity for the results of interviews (e.g Kerekes, 2007). Erickson and Shultz’s (1982) research concerning the counselling interviews first defined the role of establishing co-membership in the success of an interview and demonstrated the relation between how close the co-membership between the participants of the interview and the importance of it in order to mitigate potential impediments in their communication (Erickson & Shultz, 1982). Swedish linguist Viveka Adelswärd in her 1988 study also observed that candidates who result to be successful in their job interview devote more time to discussing with their gatekeepers matters that are not directly related to the job; however, she stressed that co-membership talk is merely an instrument to enhance interview climate, rather than an end in itself. Canadian linguist Julia A. Kerekes in her 2006 investigation of intercultural interviews emphasized that in some cases co-membership and trust can be built irrespective of fact that linguistic or cultural background is being shared by the interlocutors. She also provided evidence in defense of co-membership talk as it proved to have an impact on emotional involvement of the gatekeeper in the interaction thus facilitating the process of rapport establishment. What is even more remarkable about her research is that she demonstrated how when the gatekeepee does not answer in a way they were expected to, the gatekeeper is more lenient with them if prior to that a sense of co-membership was established between them, drawing attention to the significance of building a rapport and solidarity for the positive result of the gatekeeping encounter. As it was mentioned before, in such gatekeeping encounters, the interaction is closer to equal, the content is constructed in a collaboration, and the gatekeepers are not merely responding to their interviewers’ actions but can also experience “a sense of agency in their own success”. In such a way, the gatekeepee’s verbal construction not only serves as a tool of action but also as an object for assessment. In fact, the applicants do not solely produce a text in the dialogue with the gatekeepers, but they also construct a picture of themselves (Kerekes, 2006).
Developing Adelswärd’s work, Scheuer (2001) proved such an “egalitarian style” (when the participants of the gatekeeping encounter equally participate in the dialogue) might increase the possibility of positive outcomes of the interview (Scheuer, 2001). Adelswärd’s examination of gatekeepees’ “argumentative strategies” and how they contribute to building solidarity and rapport with the interviewers is practical, however her research is effectively quantitative, presenting counts of candidates’ self-assessments about their strengths and weaknesses, exemplified by interview extracts (Adelswärd, 1988). On the other hand, Kerekes (2006) stresses the cruciality, for candidates, of sharing positive attitudes that are valued by their gatekeepers. Again, her findings are quite useful, as they demonstrate candidates’ efforts in establishing solidarity. Nevertheless, neither of these researches uses a systematic analytical tool for semantic analysis to investigate candidates’ abilities to construct rapport and solidarity.
Following a description of the theoretical framework and the database, the strategies used by candidates will be discussed and exemplified.
Methodology
Participants
The empirical research will be set in one of Russian universities. The participants will include one interviewer performing as the gatekeeper and five candidates applying for the job of a private English language teacher. The candidates must be native speakers of the Russian language that learned English as a foreign language and are trained in teaching English to non-native speakers. The interviewer must be a native speaker of English and share the common values of the cultures of English-speaking countries.
Procedures
The employment interviews with the candidates will be conducted via a program that provides video/audio calls over the internet. The selection process is meant to determine whether the candidate is eligible for the position of a private English language teacher. The original names of the participants will be hidden alongside with all the sensitive personal information. Also, informed consent of participation in the experiment is to be signed by all participants of the study.
Data analysis
The primary tool of the analysis of data collected during the empirical research will be conversation analysis defined by Pomerantz and Fehr (1997, pp. 71-74). In their 1997 study, five principal tools of conversation analysis:
1. Selecting a sequence.
2. Characterizing the actions in the sequence.
3. Considering how speakers’ packaging of actions, including their selection of reference terms, provide for certain understandings of the actions performed and the matters talked about.
4. Considering how the timing and taking of turns provide for certain understandings of actions and the matters talked about.
5. Considering how the ways the actions were accomplished implicate certain identities, roles, and/or relationships for the inter-actants.
This analytical framework will be used to conduct a conversation analysis of the five job interviews investigated in the current study.