Job interview

Cross cultural issues[edit]

As with the common comparisons between Eastern and Western cultures, interviews and the constructs assessed by the interview have been found to differ across the world. For example, studies of the United States of America (USA) to Canada have found conflicting results in average levels of agreeableness in each country.^[205] People tend to use social comparison when reporting their own level of agreeableness.^[205] Even though Canadians are likely to be more agreeable, they might score similarly to those individuals from the USA.^[205] In situations where social comparison is a factor, an honest answer could result in under- or over-estimation.

Because of these cultural differences, more businesses are adding cross-cultural training to their HR training.^[206][207] The goal of cross-cultural training is to improve one's ability to adapt and judge people from other cultures. This training is a first step in ensuring the process of using the job interview to decide whom to hire works the same in a selection situation where there are cross-cultural factors.

One cultural difference in the job interview is in the type of questions applicants will expect and not expect to be asked.^[208] Interviewers outside the USA often ask about family, marital status and children.^[208] These types of questions are usually not allowed by USA job laws but acceptable in other countries. Applicants can be surprised by questions interviewers ask them that are not appropriate or consistent with their own cultures. For example, in Belgium and Russia interviewers are unlikely to ask about an applicant's personal values, opinions and beliefs.^[208] Thus, USA interviewers who do ask applicants about their values can make non-USA applicants uneasy or misinterpret the reason they are not prepared.

Another difference is in the consistency with which common constructs, even those that generalize across cultures, predict across different countries and cultures. For example, those who seem high in Agreeableness can do less well on the job in European workplaces.^[206] But those high in Agreeableness in the USA or Japan will do better on the job as measured on the same criteria.^[206] In some cases the structured Behavior Description Interview (BDI) that predicts who will do well on the job in some countries, from their interview scores, fails to predict accurately which applicants to hire in other countries.^[206]

Methodological biases