Introduction

The job interview forms an integral part of workplace discourse, and is a crucial stage in an individual's transition into new employment. As a gatekeeping encounter, it operates within the discursive boundaries of existing workplace ideologies and is a site of professional and social identity construction. Research on job interviews has shown that constructing a ‘believable identity’ is a key element in promoting positive outcomes (Kerekes 2006; Roberts and Campbell 2006). In order to achieve this, prospective employees are expected to demonstrate situational competency characterised by their ability to combine various discourses – personal, professional and institutional (Iedema 2003; Roberts and Campbell 2006).

The gatekeeper's analysis of this competency centres on the candidates’ background presentations – their first opportunity to establish a believable identity. This process typically takes place in a face-to- face setting in which speech is only one of many communicative means available to the participants. It is thus inherently multimodal, as modes such as gesture, gaze, body orientation and written text intersect with speech in the creation of meaning. This chapter extends the existing research on gatekeeping by applying a multimodal approach that considers interaction as an ‘ensemble’ in which individuals utilise different communicative means in co-constructing meaning (Jewitt 2009) and ultimately negotiating their identities. To this end, multimodal interaction analysis (Norris 2004a) is applied to observe the different discourses in action.

The job interview: a transition gate

The transition into employment typically revolves around the evaluation of an individual's discourse expected to evoke organisation-specific values and competencies (Erickson and Shultz 1982; Roberts 2000). This requirement often takes the form of a criteria list not revealed to the applicant but embedded in the interview questions (Adelswärd 1988; Iedema 2003; Roberts 1985; Roberts and Campbell 2006). It is a conversation but, at the same time, so much more than just a conversation. It is where the candidate's identity is evaluated against an institutionally predetermined list; this identity, created in the here-and- now of the job interview, is then used as a predictor of more or less desired workplace behaviours and, ultimately, the candidate's fit with the organisation and their suitability for the job.