Abstract:

In modern society, Chinese and foreign corporations both have reliance on job interview in talent recruitment and human resource management. Associated with the fierce competition in the market, people pay increasing attention to the skills and strategies of interview. However, due to the differences between Chinese and western economic system, values, language, culture and other aspects, interview under different backgrounds frequently leads to different results. This thesis, taking Chinese state-owned enterprises and foreign-funded enterprises as the research objects, discusses the differences in Chinese and Western job interviews from the perspective of cross-cultural communication, in terms of demands of talents, contents, and methods. This study is expected to help interviewees to adapt to the multicultural interview environment, and find satisfactory jobs.

Keywords: job interview; state-owned enterprises; foreign-funded enterprises; cross-cultural perspective

摘  要：

面试是现代社会中外企业选拔和管理人才的主要途径。在激烈的市场竞争中，人们越来越重视面试的技巧和策略。然而，由于中西方的经济体制、价值体系、语言文化等方面都存在一定的差异，不同文化背景下的面试可能会导致不同的结果。本文以国有企业和外资企业为研究对象, 从跨文化角度探讨了中西方面试在人才要求、面试方式和内容的差异。文章旨在帮助面试者适应多元文化、找到满意的工作。

关键词：面试；国有企业；外资企业；跨文化交际

1 Introduction
Interview literally means “a meeting where a person is asked questions to decide whether he / she can take up a job”. Undoubtedly, it is critical for the job hunters to learn some of the skills in attaining successful interview in modern society, in order to “take up” a good job in the hot competition. 
With the development of economic globalization, more and more foreign-funded companies come into Chinese market, which provide more jobs and working opportunities for the local people. Generally speaking, the college graduates at present are much fond of the jobs both in state-owned companies and the foreign-funded companies in China. Although these two kinds of business attract them for various reasons, they are eager to get either of them for the well-being that the enterprises will bring to them.
 Coming from different cultures and economic institutions, the state-owned and foreign-funded enterprises naturally differ from each other in the job interviews. The more cross-cultural communication the interviewees grasp, the more successful he or she can be in the job interview offered by foreign companies, either for the Chinese employer hoping to work in foreign-funded companies, or for the foreign employer hoping to work in Chinese companies.