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Job interviewers will judge your social status within seconds of you opening your mouth, study suggests
Target Skills: Vocabulary, Listening, Reading, Comprehension, Conversation
Vocabulary
Prospective /prəˈspektiv/
of or in the future: prospective earnings.
Potential, likely, or expected:a prospective partner.
Example: Prospective parents should not at any time engage in anything that would be undesirable if reproduced in their children.
Meritocratic /merədəˈkradik/
relating to or characteristic of a society in which power is held by people selected according to merit.
Example: Such privileges are breaches in the ideal of a meritocratic democracy.
Encapsulate /inˈkapsəˌlāt,enˈkapsəˌlāt/
express the essential features of (something) succinctly.
Example: The conclusion is encapsulated in one sentence.
Hinder /ˈhindər/
create difficulties for (someone or something), resulting in delay or obstruction.
Example: Various family stalemates were hindering communication.
Perceive /pərˈsēv/
Interpret or look on (someone or something) in a particular way; regard as.
Example: If Guy does not perceive himself as disabled, nobody else should.
Vocabulary Questions
Question 1 – What are the ideal qualities of a prospective employee?
Question 2- What do you think hinders you from learning English the best that you could?
Question 3- How do you perceive someone’s opinion of you?
Let’s read the article together!
Job interviewers will judge your social status within seconds of you opening your mouth, study suggests
Employers judge the social status of prospective employees just seconds after hearing them speak for the first time, according to researchers who say this could affect job prospects and salary.
Researchers argued in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences that the idea that the U.S. is meritocratic—encapsulated by the American Dream—adds to the "willful ignorance that Americans exhibit regarding the relative lack of actual economic mobility in society."
Social class, which the researchers defined as a person's status in society reflected by their income, occupation and educational attainment, is in fact "remarkably stable" across generations, they said.
Question 1- According to researchers, what elements defined a person’s social status?
To investigate how signals of social class might help or hinder job hunters, researchers at the Yale School of Management carried out five studies involving hundreds of people.
Researchers asked people to listen to individuals speak and guess their class. The team found participants were able to correctly guess a speaker's class, race, age, and gender more than half of the time. Another showed speakers were more likely to be identified as in a higher social class if they had a similar voice to the subjective standard, like that of Google and Amazon's virtual assistants. The team also discovered that participants judged a speaker's social status according to their pronunciation, rather what they were saying.
Question 2- Instead of what they were saying, according what where the speakers’ social status judged on?
The final part of the study saw researchers ask 274 people with hiring experience listen to 20 job candidates, from a range of social classes in the New Haven area of Connecticut, describe themselves in a pre-interview discussion.
The respondents were more likely to think a candidate was competent and fit for a job if they were perceived to be of a higher social class. They were also more likely to give them a better starting salary and signing bonus, compared with those regarded as lower class.
Question 3- How were the respondents likely to perceive someone of a higher social class?
Discussion Questions
Question 1- What elements are commonly used in your country to perceive or guess someone’s social status?
Question 2- Is it the same in your country? Do people perceive someone from a higher social class to be more competent for a job? Why or why not?