Migration, ethnicity and competing discourses in the job interview: synthesizing the institutional and personal

Abstract

This article, based on a unique data set of video-recorded job interviews, examines the institutional and personal discourses of the competency-based interview and how their synthesis produces an `authentic self '. The interview's requirement for the synthesis of work-based and personal identities is particularly disadvantaging to foreign-born minority ethnic candidates. Foreign-born candidates often lack access to British `job interview English' because of unemployment, marginalization in ethnic work units and the dominant culture's `othering' of their identity. Examples of candidates producing a convincing synthetic persona are contrasted with unsuccessful candidates whose `lack' of synthesization marks them as having a hybrid identity. They are judged by interviewers as `inconsistent', `untrustworthy' and non-belongers to the organization. Because there is little relationship between the required discursive skill of interviewees and the actual demands of the job, the interview ritual is as much about constructing the institution as it is about the fair and effective selection of candidates.