About Face: Reflexively Considering "Audience" in Hiring Situations. (April 2019)

• Record Type: Journal Article
• Authors: Randazzo, Chalice
• Is Part Of: Journal of business and technical communication. Volume 33:Number 2(2019)
• Page Start: 203
• Page End: 232
• Publication Date: 2019-04
• Subjects: résumé -- audience -- rhetorical listening -- diversity hiring -- reflexivity; Business communication -- Periodicals; Communication of technical information -- Periodicals; 658.45
• DOI: 10.1177/1050651918816355
• Languages: English
• ISSNs: 1050-6519

Abstract

Using data from 88 students, 20 advisers, and 24 hirers about U.S. résumés, this article focuses on face of the company, the concept of employers' evaluating how well applicants might represent a company. The results of applying rhetorical listening's identification–disidentification to "face" suggested two outcomes and their implications. First, primary audiences invoked secondary audiences to the point in which they conflated, suggesting that résumés should incorporate secondary audiences. Second, hirers sometimes violated their own beliefs about diversity hiring because of audiences they invoked, suggesting that because invoking audience can perpetuate inequitable hiring practices, hirers should be more nuanced about the audiences they choose.