1. Navigating the Interview
Todd Odgers, Principal
NorQuest College Centre for Intercultural Education
Kerry Louw, Project Lead

2. Navigating the Interview-Project Funder
Government of Alberta -
Foreign Qualification Recognition Innovation Fund
Thank you!
The FQR Innovation Fund is being offered to assist Alberta employers to recruit, integrate, develop and retain workers with foreign-earned education, skills and experience who are already in the province.  
We believe this project reduces barriers for immigrants in job interviews by helping them understand and navigate the “unwritten rules” of the Canadian job interview. We also believe this project will systematically support HR Professionals and hiring managers to understand their unstated expectations of job candidates and improve their ability to hire qualified candidates from a diverse talent pool.
The resource is innovative in supporting both immigrants and HR professionals to understand the perspective of the other proponent in the job interview and to have increased adaptive skills to change their communication behaviors and better achieve their goals in the interview: a two-pronged approach to the differences that matter within a job interview.
200 people participated in the project as collaborators in resource development, reviewers from diverse ethnic communities and HR backgrounds, participants in pilot lessons, workshops and conference sessions. We appreciate all of the feedback we received to enhance the final product.

3. CIE Activities

4. Part of the Solution
Develop resources that improve labour market integration for immigrants and employers
Help immigrants to access employment and move beyond entry level positions
Engage and support employers to realize the benefits of hiring IEPs
The resource is innovative in supporting both immigrants and HR professionals to understand the perspective of the other proponent in the job interview and to have increased adaptive skills to change their communication behaviors and better achieve their goals in the interview: a two-pronged approach to the differences that matter within a job interview.

5. Our project helps you support and develop
Hiring Managers
HR Professionals
IEP Professionals
International and Bridging Students

6. Navigating the Interview Resources
1. Interview Videos with:
4 culturally diverse candidates
3 Canadian panelist
2. Guides for HR and IEP candidates:
Culture Specific Framework
Canadian Unwritten Rules
Interview practices prior, during and post
3. Communication Choice Points
Online assessment activity
Videos relevant and authentic framework based approach: intercultural - Lewis, Canadian process – form and fit;
Allowed for deeper facilitated conversations to understand both why and what the characters do what they do
Goal to ultimately support informed decision making for both the candidate and the HR professionals
Videos alone can support facilitation and discussion
Videos with guides can offer more learnings and practices and provides a process for communication across these cultural differences in the moment of interview – a negotiation of meaning

7. Perspective taking, pragmatics, and overcoming hidden bias

8. Both sides of the table Employers and candidates: Recognize Understand
Adapt
when hiring/working across cultures, there are certain challenges that must be overcome to ensure companies are finding the best candidate and good candidates are being hired.
Our cultural upbringing informs our sense about the way things are and the way things should be. Cultural elements consciously or unconsciously influence how we talk, think and act.
These common ways of acting and communicating can lead to a sense of belonging to community, but can also lead to a sense of superiority—the belief that one’s culture is better by comparison (and even sometimes to thinking others must be marginalized). We can’t assume people from elsewhere hold similar values, or would if they were given the opportunity.
Even though employers may recognize the value of intercultural skills and have the best intentions, they may unconsciously be rejecting international candidates and limiting their opportunities for success in interviews. Employers don’t often screen for intercultural skills as an asset in the recruitment process, and because there are no formal assessments for these skills it is often left up to job candidates to demonstrate them.
By helping both HR professionals and immigrant candidates to understand the other’s perspective, this project presents an innovative approach to increasing adaptive skills to better achieve both subject’s goals in the interview process.

9. Two-perspectives approach
Hiring Managers/HR
Adapt practices and enable them to hire more effectively from a diverse talent pool
IEP and Candidates
Prepare and present themselves more effectively to prospective employers in Canada
Intercultural competence involves an ability to hold more than one perspective which allows for engaging with diversity
Based on recognizing one’s own values experiences and challenges and examining one’s own POV
As instructors your role includes Successfully identifying
Expertise, skills and characteristics of diverse candidates and advising them on how to effectively link these with the Canadian employers needs
Moving forward we’ll be focusing today more on culturally diverse candidates perspectives…

10. Understanding the Unwritten Rules
“It’s just what we do! “ “It’s common sense” So…What is it we do? What do we see as common sense?
When interviewing new candidates the ‘direct report’ often looks to hire candidates who will fit in. Fitting in describes functioning and being regarded as a ‘normal’ constructive team member; that is, performing in an established way that meets the needs of what is wanted and expected of a team member in a company culture.
If the normal is an all Canadian team and the goal is to continue with the same dynamic then hiring the candidate who fits in may work. But if the goal is to engage with diversity to meet a more global future and benefit from the opportunity it can provide, then there is need for the diverse candidates
First impressions are very important in the interview process – and play a big part in who gets hired
Small talk is part of first impression making – along with greetings, introductions small talk and transition to formal interview
Let’s take a look at the panel’s impressions of the candidates…
And instructors can help in developing navigational skills prior to, during and after the interview. The guide offers cultural information – of the Canadian and the diverse cultures represented -throughout the process of the interviews
Let’s look at what it is we do in small talk

11. To overcome hidden biases
Build awareness
Grow willingness
Takes work, persistence, resilience
Making the unconscious conscious
Influence our behavior without our being aware of their role … not about being bad – no need to feel embarrassed by them – sometimes really surprise us when they are pointed out

12. The intercultural interview
Is a high stakes interactional space where different expectations meet
Job candidates bring expertise, skill, education and experience (e.g. may be motivated by family or community needs)
HR or hiring managers bring their expectation's, explicit and implicit, of effective candidates .. (e.g. will be personally motivated)

13. Creates casual beginning Links the social and professional
Small Talk
What it does (for Canadians)
Creates casual beginning
Links the social and professional
Builds rapport and comfort for the interview
Softens directness and hierarchy
Creates common ground opportunities
Establishes turn-taking
Transitions quickly into task
Panels Canadian perspective of fit is: looks for points to connect on, keeps it simple and light, shows interest and enthusiasm,
appears confident
For Mei Li: Joins small talk but is uncomfortable, Unsure what it’s for, Feels each question must be important so answers are serious
Respectfully doesn’t add ideas to the panel members thoughts
Perspective taking Questions are… Mei Li’s learning: what could Mei Li do to adapt to see small changes to get to goal as a considered candidate
HR learning: what could panel do to adapt to see the value of who is in front of panel
For Ahmed

14. And a framework

15. Lewis, R.D. language, communication and culture 2013
This Culture Type Framework generalizes culture based diversity
- mention here how we chose the candidates… based on immigrant populations coming to Alberta, and mapping them to a culture based framework to enable understanding of fairly clear distinctions
- the project was accepted on the proposal that the position be a leadership one in a professional capacity
Reactive Mei
Multi-active Ahmed
Louise the Canadian who lands between the linear and reactive to match with Canadian panel expectations and identify these for newcomers.
(The 4th candidate is James from the UK – who we didn’t include today for time) who lands clsoe to the corner – at linear
Lewis, R.D. language, communication and culture 2013

16. How to find it… Is online at
Please contact Kerry Louw with any content questions

17. Thank you Todd Odgers Principal
Centre for Intercultural Education | NorQuest College
T  | F  | C 
St | Room 723J Edmonton, Alberta, Canada T5J 1L6