Disabling Employment Interviews: Warfare to work

Abstract

Employment interview research displays a greater concern for refining employment interviews to benefit employers rather than prospective employees. The interviewee's perspective is often overlooked. Further, generally scant attention has been paid to the interview experiences of disabled interviewees. In this paper I present findings from a project that sought to understand disabled interviewees' experiences of employment interviews. My analysis suggests such experiences were dominated by feelings of anxiety and manipulation, particularly when contextualised within contemporary labour market conditions. In this context, I reflect on the need for ethical rather than technical concerns into employment interviews and how innovations in interview techniques may be having a negative affect on interviewees. I further stress the need to reject victim blaming ideologies when researching disabled interviewees' experiences of employment interviews to counter the over emphasis of past research into changing the disabled person rather than the disabling interview environment.