Do accents speak louder than words in a job interview?.

​By Sue Walder

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Accents and how they may affect your job prospects have been in the news lately.

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First we had the Cheryl Cole story – apparently ‘sacked’ from the US version of The X Factor because American audiences couldn’t understand her Geordie accent.

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And this week, prompted by poor old Cheryl’s experience, a survey was published that seems to show that people in various parts of Britain believe their regional accents may be hindering their careers.

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The survey, of 450 people, was carried out by CitySocialising, an online2offline network for young city dwellers. So, what did the results show?

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The top five accents voted ‘most likely to hinder your career’ are: Glascow (33%), Birmingham (30%), Manchester (27%), Middlesborough (25%) and London (21%).

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Interestingly, only 8% of Geordies felt their accent let them down, despite Cheryl’s experience.

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And could the popularity of the TV show ‘The only way is Essex’ be the reason that 60% of people with Essex accents feel the way they talk actually helps them get jobs? Other helpful accents include Cambridgeshire (67%) and Irish (51%).

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But if we were really so concerned about how we sound, surely strong regional accents would start to disappear?

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Not so, according to a recent article in The Economist, which reports that: 'the pronunciation and prosody of spoken English seems to vary as much as ever across the country of its birth.'

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And in an interview with BBC Radio Sussex, Dr Christian Uffmann, a linguist from Sussex University, suggested that issues of class and self-perception could also be at play in the CitySocialising survey.

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It’s true that we accommodate our accents in certain formal situations. We notice that some people put on a ‘phone voice’. So, it’s not surprising that in a job interview we might try harder to make ourselves understood.

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Regardless of where you come from you should always strive to be yourself in an interview. Prepare well. Be confident and clear. And stay calm – it can never be as bad as this ...

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You can read Sue's blog, Having a Word, here.