How to Show Cultural Intelligence in Job Interviews in English

Hello, and thank you so much for tuning in to the Express to Impress Podcast! This podcast is all about helping you communicate clearly, confidently, and persuasively so you can achieve your job search and career goals.

In the last episode, I talked with Care Whitmell from the Smart English Coach Podcast on How to Focus on Your English Fluency For Confident Speaking. It turns out we have a lot to talk about! So, we met again, and this time, we talked about how to prepare for a job interview with an American company. Specifically, we explored how your cultural background can affect how you answer interview questions and, ultimately, how the interview goes. 

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As you know, when you’re interviewing for a job that involves working with people from different cultural backgrounds, it’s incredibly important to show your cultural intelligence. In this episode, you’ll learn how to show cultural intelligence in job interviews in English.

Organized Speaking Program: Enrolling for September 2023

Before we dive into that conversation, I have some exciting news to share. I recently launched my first Organized Speaking Program in August, and the response has been fantastic. Participants are actively taking part and learning a lot. With a growing waitlist for the program, I’ve decided to offer it again in September, and this time, I’m excited to add a group chat feature. To keep it personalized, I’m limiting the group size to just six participants. If you want more details, you can visit my website at express-to-impress.com.

Now, let’s dive into my conversation with Clare!

Showing Cultural Intelligence in Job Interviews

Clare:

I think it’s really useful to find out more about how our language backgrounds can affect the way we answer interview questions and also if we get the job or not. So, Kristine, you’ve done a lot of research on this, and you use culture maps to help your students prepare for interviews. Could you tell us a little more about these culture maps?

Kristine:

Absolutely. I’m happy to be here. This is a topic I love talking about this and working with my students and clients to understand how their culture impacts their performance and their default answers in interviews and helping them become more aware of that and make adjustments if needed to better connect with the interviewer. So, I use culture maps from Erin Mayer. She is an American researcher at the INSEAD Business School in France. Her work is very popular and very well-known. Even some multicultural companies require reading her materials. So very influential, and part of it is just the simplicity of these culture maps where you look at all these different areas where our culture impacts how we do business, like communication, giving negative feedback, making decisions, disagreeing.

She plops each country on the map. So she has a measure: is your culture low context, high context communication? Where are you at on that? And then you can look at all these other countries where they’re at. And, of course, it’s an average, but I will say with all of my students and clients I’ve worked with, everyone has told me these are spot on.

That’s been very reassuring, and it’s been so enlightening for me, and working with people from different cultures and allowing me to have more empathy when I’m feeling frustrated when I look at this map, and I understand this is a cultural difference. I can’t take this personally. I can’t hold them to my cultural standards. 

Clare:

So, could you tell us a little bit about the countries that are represented in the culture maps? Where does she get her data from?

Kristine:

Yes. So, she has as many countries as she can possibly get data for. And so most countries are represented. I don’t know the exact number off the top of my head, but most countries are there. Occasionally, I can’t find a country, but it is a constant work in progress, and when she can have access to gathering that research, she’ll certainly add that to the list.

Clare:

Okay, fabulous. Because I’ve seen some of the countries which I’m personally interested in because I’ve lived and worked there. So, for example, France, the Netherlands, Italy, and I’ve also seen that Spain is on the list, obviously also the UK and the US, but then there are also Asian countries and South American countries that she looks at. 

Kristine:

Oh yes. African countries, Middle Eastern countries. So, most countries are on the list. And at this point, to access her maps, you do need to pay on her website.  I’ve, you know, paid just one day at a time, and I’ve gathered the maps that I need at that time and saved them, and then I can share them with my students so they can get a framework before they meet with somebody from a different culture for an interview, they can know what they’re walking into. And it’s been very helpful, and you can just pick which countries you want to see on these maps and generate them. 

Clare: 

So that’s really helpful if you have an interview with, for example, a British English speaker or an American English speaker and say you come from, I don’t know, like France or Brazil or Japan, for example, you’re going for this interview, and although you know what to expect from an interview in your own country, you may not really know what to expect from a British English interviewer or an American in English interviewer.

Kristine:

Yes. Absolutely. And one thing that I have found is that many people do think they’re prepared. But there are these invisible forces, invisible like values and cultural influences that we have. And it can hurt you in the interviews if you are telling stories that would be appropriate in your culture but that are not appropriate in the culture you’re interviewing in. And also, like it’s been for me, people can suddenly understand why they’ve had some conflicts or disagreements or frustrations when working with colleagues from different cultures. 

Clare:

Yeah, that’s fascinating. Because I can imagine in a British English interview, for example, you may well get a sort of behavioral-type question. You call them these STAR questions, I call them CAR questions. They’re very similar, aren’t they? When you have a challenge, and you have to say how you reacted to that challenge, what actions you took, and what the result was. These interview questions are great to find out how you behave in certain situations. Could you give us an example of what might not be appropriate if, for example, you’re from France or, say, Brazil or, a Middle Eastern country, perhaps? What would be for you an inappropriate sort of answer?

Kristine:

Sure. So, I prepared a few questions that we could look at. Okay. Let’s look at, “Tell me about a difficult decision you had to make for your team?”

Decision-making is done very differently in different parts of the world. For example, in Japan and the Netherlands, getting consensus from every team member every step of the way is very important. The decision is made through consensus, and in many parts of the world, decisions are made in a very different way. So if you were in Korea or Poland, the boss would make the decision. 

And so those are the two extremes. Then many countries are somewhere in between where maybe, in the UK, the boss is going to get input but ultimately make that decision. 

Clare:

Yes, absolutely. Looking at some of the experiences that I have, the Dutch, for example, are very different in terms of leadership and decision-making. There’s lots of communication, and often people are equal partners in discussions. Whereas I think in Italy, it’s going to be your boss that makes the final decision.

So if they were interviewing for an American company, how should they frame that question?

Kristine:

Yes. This is the million-dollar question, and I’ll tell you what I recommend to my clients. I recommend being honest and sharing how they have handled things, but then taking a moment to educate the interviewer. The interviewer may not know of these invisible cultural influences. And say, you know, this was appropriate in my culture. You know, I was rewarded. Say any sort of proof that it was successful. But I understand that this is not the way that Americans or, you know, British people handle these sorts of situations. And I am open to trying what is acceptable and accepted in your company. So, I would certainly be willing to adapt my approach if needed.

Clare:

What a lovely answer. Because that also shows so much awareness, doesn’t it? Of how people do business in different countries. And so, you know, you can say, look, this is what happens in my country, and this is what was successful for me, but I understand it’s different, and I’m open to obviously working in a different way.

Please listen to the audio recording above for more of my conversation with Clare!

Tune in For The Rest of Our Conversation

That’s all for today! I invite you to tune in soon to catch the rest of my conversation with Clare. As always, thank you so much for listening to the Express to Impress podcast. If you found this episode insightful, please share it with one friend! See you next time. Bye!