How your first seven words can land a job
SOCIAL class can be determined after someone has spoken just seven words, and it could have major implications in job interviews, researchers from Yale University believe.
In a study, 274 people with hiring experience were asked to listen to audio recordings, or read transcripts, from the pre-interview discussions of people who applied for a lab manager position at the university.
The hiring managers were asked to assess the candidate’s professional qualities, starting salary, signing-on bonus and social class, without reading CVS.
The findings showed that within the first seven words, hirers had made snap judgments, based on class, later reflected in decisions to hire, as well as salary and bonus levels.
“People with hiring experience infer competence and fitness based on socioeconomic position estimated from a few seconds of an applicant’s speech,” said Dr Michael
Kraus, of Yale School of Management. “If we want to move to a more equitable society, then we must contend with these ingrained psychological processes that drive our early impressions.”
Researchers found that speech following traditional standards for English as well as digital standards, such as the voices used in Amazon Alexa or Google Assistant, was associated with both actual and perceived higher social class. Those of higher social class were deemed to be fitter for the job.
And they found it was pronunciation, rather than the content of the speech, that communicated social status, and that it took just seven words to draw a conclusion.
“Our study shows that a person’s speech patterns shape the way people perceive them, including assessing their fitness for a job,” added Dr Kraus.
The research was published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
It takes seven words for job applicants to reveal to interviewers their class. These are not U and non-u marker words like toilet, pleased-to-meet you, pardon or uni (in place of lavatory, how-doyou-do, what and university). Research by Yale shows any seven words are enough to establish the speaker’s socio-economic class. It seems nothing has changed since Eliza Doolittle (in Bernard Shaw’s written version) said: “Cheer ap, Keptin; n’ baw ya flahr orf a pore gel.” Her accent, so the phonetician Henry Higgins said, would “keep her in the gutter to the end of her days”. But perhaps things have changed here. If anything (to judge by the BBC, for example), an employer is likely these days to harbour a prejudice against the Roedean daughter of a duke. Such an unfortunate might hire Professor Higgins to help her speak like Eliza.