The interview is an important component of the selection process for employment and is one of the initial presentations of self by the applicant to the interviewer. As an extension of a study by Wilson, Aleman, and Leatham (1998), this study used politeness theory to investigate perception of face threat in the context of a job interview, specifically, when making requests and giving advice. This study predicted that jobseekers perceive an act as a greater threat to an interviewer’s negative face (appealing to interviewer’s autonomy) when making a request than when giving advice. Secondly, the study predicted that job seekers would perceive an act as greater threat to the interviewer’s positive face (appealing to the interviewer’s desire for approval) when giving advice or recommendations than when making a request. Both hypotheses were supported and other related interests such as acceptability of the act and likelihood of getting the job were also investigated. / text

Thesis (M.B.A.)--Boston University

Training for interpersonal skills is used widely in organizations but few empirical studies have measured its effectiveness in creating behavioral change. Though the impact of individual differences on training for technical skills has been examined extensively, prior studies in interpersonal skills training have not investigated personal characteristics to determine antecedents of interpersonal knowledge and predictors of learning. The current investigation applies social learning theory to the development of interpersonal skills training for job interviewing and examines the role of personality on training outcomes. In Study 1, I analyzed the interpersonal skills relevant to interviewing for a job and developed a measure of interpersonal interview knowledge. In Study 2, I investigated two formats for training interpersonal skills for interviews. One format used general rules for behavior to teach interpersonal skills for interviews while the other format used a combination of rules and examples of real interview behaviors modeled by actors. The primary aim of Study 2 was to examine the relationships between personality, training format, training’s fit with self-concept, knowledge, and interview performance. Training format did not impact interpersonal interview knowledge but did influence satisfaction with the training. Surprisingly, cognitive ability was not related to interview knowledge before or after training. Agreeableness and conscientiousness were positively related interpersonal interview knowledge. Interpersonal interview knowledge and conscientiousness positively predicted interview performance. Agreeableness, however, was negatively related to interview performance. These findings begin to answer questions about how individual differences can impact the effectiveness of interpersonal skills training in terms of both knowledge development and transfer of skills to job-related contexts.

This study explores one aspect of the professional preparation of students graduating from teacher education institutions. A case study of one of the University of Canterbury College of Education’s initial teacher education programmes (the BTchLn (Primary) qualification) is the focus for this study. The purpose of the study is to illustrate what school employers from the Canterbury region, and BTchLn (Primary) graduates and teacher educators from the University of Canterbury, consider as important practices when preparing graduating-year students for the beginning-teacher employment process. This study addresses the lack of systematic research into the employment of beginning teachers within a New Zealand setting. The study employs a case study approach and involves two stages of data gathering. Quantitative data is collected in Stage One to identify potential participants for the case study. More substantive qualitative data are collected in Stage Two through semi-structured interviews conducted with samples of school principals, graduates and initial teacher education lecturers from the Canterbury region. The findings suggest that the decentralised system of employment in operation in New Zealand has made the employment process complex for teachers entering the profession because schools have developed their own individual practices and preferences in the employment-related area and advertise their beginning-teacher positions while students are still completing their programme of study. The findings also suggest that lecturers at the University of Canterbury perform an important and valued function when they prepare their graduating-year students for employment, although there are both strengths and weaknesses in their current employment-related programme and practices. This case study will inform course and qualification reviews planned at the University of Canterbury, and will be of interest to other teacher education organisations in New Zealand that prepare their graduating-year students for employment.

Previous job interview studies have found that evaluations of English-as-an-additional language (L+) candidates related less to demonstrated qualifications and more to matches or mismatches in communicative expectations. Candidates’ pragmatic skillfulness can affect interviewers’ perceptions of their competence, and by extension, their hireability. Despite the importance of pragmatics to interview success, few studies have looked at the efficacy of pragmatics training. To address this gap, a mixed-methods study was ncarried out with L+ English university students and professional interviewers. Two training types – pragmatics-focused feedback (n = 9) and feedback plus a pragmatics lesson (n = 9) – were compared to a control (n = 9). A second focus was to understand the factors that influenced the nine interviewers’ evaluations. To this end, the interviewers engaged in a video-stimulated recall session. The resulting data were coded thematically. Finally, the interviewers’ communication was analyzed using an Interviewer Actions instrument and qualitative analysis. Results showed that both experimental groups significantly outperformed the control group, which provides an endorsement of pragmatics training for L+ candidates. A second finding was that language ability themes were most prevalent in interviewer comments. This reveals a self-referential emphasis on the candidates’ talk as the primary source of competency judgments, which disadvantages L+ speakers. The Interviewer Action scores, supported by candidate evaluations and comments, indicated that engaged and supportive interviewer communication was most favourably received by the candidates. However, the qualitative analysis highlighted the challenge for interviewers in engaging with candidates while maintaining neutrality vis-à-vis responses. With increasingly diverse candidate pools, interviewers must upgrade their communication skills to make confident judgments about all interviewees. / Graduate

This dissertation is a sociolinguistic, data-driven study of authentic job interviews with second language speakers of Danish. The job interviews are part of a Danish governmental initiative aimed particularly at immigrants and newcomers to Denmark, who are assumed to experience linguistic and cultural difficulties at the Danish labour market. The particular designs of the job interviews as well as the explicitly stated evaluations of language and culture create an unusual frame. On the one hand we deal with "traditional" job interviews as institutional gatekeeping instruments; on the other hand we face a tailored selection process meant to address the needs of the vulnerable. These contradictory practices produce certain tensions: although the job interviews in focus are meant to accomplish the target group's special needs, they exemplify a practice in which the good intentions are all dressed up but have nowhere to go.

The proposed study explores the cognitive miser approach to perception formation in job interviews, as well as factors that may motivate people to not act as cognitive misers. Personality type (introverted and extraverted) and gender are characteristics of people that are associated with many stereotypes (Heilman, 2001; Andersen & Klatzky, 1987), and can have a large influence on an employer’s perception of an applicant, particularly when the employer is acting as a cognitive miser. It is hypothesized that in longer interviews, employers will be motivated to not act as cognitive misers, because they have more information about the applicant, have more of an opportunity to disconfirm any biases they may hold about the applicant, and experience greater liking toward the applicant. To test this, participants will conduct interviews with job applicants (who are actually confederates) and rate their perceptions of the applicants’ expected job performance. Participants will either conduct a long or short interview with a male introvert, a female introvert, a male extravert, or a female extravert. Job applicants will provide participants with the same information, although the information about personality type and the amount of information given will depend on the condition. It is predicted that participants who conduct shorter interviews will rate the applicants in line with popular stereotypes that favor extraverts over introverts, and males over females. Conversely, participants in longer interviews will be motivated to thoroughly think through their evaluations of the applicants, and there will be no significant difference in their ratings of male extraverts, female extraverts, male introverts, and female introverts.

Submitted by Maike Costa (maiksebas@gmail.com) on 2016-08-22T14:28:04Z No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivo total.pdf: 1634090 bytes, checksum: b14e8dec70dee147c137aa7036e5c854 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-08-22T14:28:04Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 arquivo total.pdf: 1634090 bytes, checksum: b14e8dec70dee147c137aa7036e5c854 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-06-06 / This research, conceived under the perspective of the argumentative semantics, aimed to investigate the most recurrent linguistic modalizers in job interview. This study objects to identify the ones more commonly used by the speakers, based on the incidence and function of these argumentative modalizers. The theoretical support of this research is the perspective of Ducrot and collaborators (1988) to whom language is naturally argumentative; as well as Espíndola’s (2004) standpoint to whom not only language, but also the use we make of it in our social interactions is naturally argumentative. In addition to this theoretical perspective, the assumptions on use of modalizers, proposed by Castilho e Castilho (1993), Neves (2011) e Nascimento e Silva (2012) complement our reflections, in the sense of explaining how the speaker’s subjectivity is displayed in the statement according to the choice of certain linguistic elements. We also base our reflections on Bakhtin’s (2011[1979]) concept of genre as it considers genre in a socio-interactionist perspective, which suits the linguistic perspective of argumentative semantics we have adopted in this investigation. In order to develop this study, we have considered the semantic and pragmatic-discursive aspects, since we consider language as an interactive tool. For the constitution of the corpus, we have recorded twenty-two job interviews, collected in a University Center located in Natal (RN) (Brazil), in November 2014. The analysis revealed that during the interviews, interviewers and interviewees have used various types of modalizers to draw their argumentative line. However, the epistemic modalizers, mainly through the deductive epistemic and the speculative epistemic modalizers, as well as the delimitator and the evaluative modals functioned as argumentative strategy on gender study since these were the most representative in the corpus. Therefore, considering the materiality of this genre as an event in which, through their statements, the speakers build points of view, beliefs and thoughts that make up the social environment of which they are part, inserting each modalizer constitutes a discursive orientation, presents axiological nuances that vary according to the position occupied by the speaker, orientation that establishes the discourse tissue which constitutes the genre job interview. / Esta investigación, concebida bajo la perspectiva lingüística de la semántica argumentativa, tuvo por objetivo investigar los modalizadores más recurrentes en la entrevista de selección de empleo y, a partir de la aparición y del funcionamiento argumentativo de esos modalizadores, identificar cuáles son característicos de los discursos de los locutores. Respaldamos nuestra investigación en la perspectiva de Ducrot y colaboradores (1988) según la cual la lengua es por naturaleza argumentativa, juntamente con lo propuesto por Espíndola (2004) que afirma que no solo la lengua es por naturaleza argumentativa, como también el uso que hacemos de ella en nuestras interacciones sociales. Además de esa perspectiva teórica, los presupuestos sobre la modalización, propuesto por Castilho e Castilho (1993), Neves (2011) e Nascimento e Silva (2012) complementan nuestras reflexiones, en el sentido de explicar cómo el locutor deja registrado en su enunciado marcas de su subjetividad a través de la elección de determinados elementos lingüísticos. Anclamos nuestras reflexiones, también, en la noción de género postulada por Bakhtin porque este considera los géneros en una perspectiva sociointeraccionista, adecuándose, por lo tanto, a la perspectiva lingüística de la semántica argumentativa, que adoptamos en esta investigación. Para el desarrollo de este estudio, teniendo como norte la lengua como un instrumento de interacción, fueron considerados los aspectos semánticos y pragmático-discursivos. Para la constitución del corpus, fueron grabadas veintidós entrevistas de selección de empleo, recolectadas en un Centro Universitario ubicado en Natal (RN) (Brasil), en noviembre de 2014. Los análisis revelaron que, durante el proceso interactivo aquí considerado, entrevistadores y entrevistados hicieron uso de diversos tipos de marcadores de modalidad para nortear la línea argumentativa adoptada. Sin embargo, la modalización del tipo epistémica, principalmente por medio de la aseverativa y de la casi aseverativa, juntamente con la delimitadora y la evaluativa funcionaron como estrategia argumentativa en el género en estudio, una vez que estas fueron las más representativas en el corpus. De este modo, considerando la materialidad de este género como un suceso en que, por medio de sus enunciados, los locutores construyen puntos de vista, creencias y pensamientos que componen el ambiente social del cual forma parte, la inserción de cada modalizador incluye una orientación discursiva, presenta matices axiológicos que varían de acuerdo con el posicionamiento ocupado por el locutor, orientación esa que compone la red discursiva que constituye el género entrevista de selección de empleo. / Esta pesquisa, concebida sob a perspectiva linguística da semântica argumentativa, objetivou investigar os modalizadores mais recorrentes na entrevista de seleção de emprego e, a partir da ocorrência e do funcionamento argumentativo desses modalizadores, identificar quais deles são característicos dos discursos dos locutores. Apoiamos nossa investigação na perspectiva de Ducrot e colaboradores (1988) segundo a qual a língua é por natureza argumentativa, juntamente com o acréscimo proposto por Espíndola (2004) no qual a autora afirma que não só a língua é por natureza argumentativa, como também o uso que dela fazemos nas nossas interações sociais. Além dessa perspectiva teórica, os pressupostos sobre a modalização, propostos por Castilho e Castilho (1993), Neves (2011) e Nascimento e Silva (2012) complementam nossas reflexões, no sentido de explicar como o locutor deixa registrado no seu enunciado marcas de sua subjetividade através da escolha de determinados elementos linguísticos. Ancoramos nossas reflexões, também, na noção de gênero postulada por Bakhtin (2011[1979]) porque este considera os gêneros em uma perspectiva sóciointeracionista, adequando-se, portanto, à perspectiva linguística da semântica argumentativa, que adotamos nesta investigação. Para o desenvolvimento deste estudo, tendo como norte a língua como um instrumento de interação, foram considerados os aspectos semânticos e pragmático-discursivos. Para a constituição do corpus, foram gravadas vinte e duas entrevistas de seleção de emprego, coletadas em um Centro Universitário localizado em Natal (RN) (Brasil), em novembro de 2014. As análises revelaram que, durante o processo interativo aqui considerado, entrevistadores e entrevistados fizeram uso de diversos tipos de marcadores da modalidade para nortear a linha argumentativa adotada. No entanto, a modalização do tipo epistêmica, principalmente por meio da asseverativa e da quase asseverativa, juntamente com a delimitadora e a avaliativa funcionam como estratégia argumentativa no gênero em estudo uma vez que estas foram as mais representativas no corpus. Desse modo, considerando a materialidade desse gênero como um acontecimento em que, por meio de seus enunciados, os locutores constroem pontos de vista, crenças e pensamentos que compõem o ambiente social do qual fazem parte, a inserção de cada modalizador compreende uma orientação discursiva, apresenta nuances axiológicas que variam de acordo com o posicionamento ocupado pelo locutor, orientação essa que compõe a teia discursiva que constitui o gênero entrevista de seleção de emprego.

The job interview is a gatekeeping encounter and it is crucial that the recruitment process is conducted in a fair and just way. Potential gendered verbal behaviour might affect an interviewer's impression and judgement of the interviewee. Previous research has shown that men and women differ in several ways in verbal communication, both as regards formal and informal encounters. In the present paper, a corpus study on forty job interviews is conducted with the aim to find out whether there are any differences between men and women when it comes to turn-length and the use of boosters, hedges, fillers and pauses. The results show that in the majority of the features under scrutiny, there is no statistically significant difference. These results do not go in line with earlier research on gendered verbal behaviour. Proposed explanations for these results are that the female interviewer might have encouraged a less typically gendered verbal behaviour and that younger generations have developed a less gendered conversational style compared to older generations. However, due to the limitations of the present study, no empirical conclusion can be drawn regarding this and further research needs to be conducted in order to fully explain these research findings.

Rater training is important for various human resource activities. The proposed symposium highlights contemporary research on rater training in different arenas such as performance appraisal, job interviews, and foreign language testing. New and emerging trends in rater training research and practice will also be discussed.