Interviewing Across Cultures

One of the biggest mistakes an HR professional can make when building a workforce in a new country or culture is to assume that interviewing is interviewing the world over.  The roles of both interviewer and interviewee can differ remarkably because of dissimilar cultural assumptions, and cross-cultural interviewing can present unexpected challenges for each party.  For those assigned to interview in multicultural environments, perhaps tasked to create a more globally diverse workforce, it is important to be conscious of the cultural assumptions underlying both sides of the interviewing process.

Our program on Interviewing Skills begins with a comparison of major cultural dimensions that impact the interviewing process, focusing both on issues of intercultural communication and on values shaping the roles of interviewer and interviewee.  These values affect the nature of the questions asked, the style of response, and the interviewer’s reaction to the responses.  Interviewing Skills also focuses on the corporate culture, especially as it is expressed in the values statement, which often heavily influences the interviewing process.

IOR’s half-day and full-day Interviewing Skills program provides interviewers with a conscious awareness of what each side brings to the table, so that the interviewer can assess an interview from a culturally-neutral perspective and make better-informed employment decisions.