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Success in job interviews depends largely on the interviewers' favourable opinion of the candidates' presentation, and how well candidates have managed to build solidarity with their interviewers. This article explores the ways in which candidates shape their talk to interact interpersonally with their interviewers, so as to construct affiliation and solidarity. Drawing on Systemic Functional Linguistics Appraisal theory, in particular its system of Attitude, this article examines a set of authentic job interviews in French, or French and English. The interview analyses are complemented by the candidates' comments on the impressions they had tried to convey and the interviewers' comments about their impressions of the candidates. The analysis identifies two strategies whereby candidates may construct affiliation and solidarity with their interviewers: expressing their enthusiasm for and interest in their work and profession, and demonstrating their professional ability. It also highlights the damaging effect of expressing negative feelings and opinions.

This study uses empirical data to explore the linguistic features that play a role in recruiters’ impressions of job applicants. In particular, it investigates the evaluative language used by job applicants in their CV description of their professional experiences and competences. Drawing on analysis of a set of CVs collected in France that uses systemic functional linguistics, and in particular APPRAISAL theory, this study highlights the ways in which applicants appraise their skills and competences and identifies the characteristics of successful applications. The analysis reveals how CVs function as contextual metaphors by presenting recruiters with surface level descriptions of applicants’ professional experience, while infusing these descriptions at another level with evaluative meanings that aim to validate applicants’ claims of professional competence and to persuade recruiters to align with those claims and grant a job interview. This study also establishes a useful link between appraisal analysis and impression management theory.

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Job interviews are task-focused rather than social encounters, with the primary goal of determining the employability of prospective employees. Yet fostering affiliation is also a significant feature of the job interview. Drawing on an interview between a job applicant and her potential employer and supervisor, this paper aims to contribute to an understanding of the ways in which power relations and affiliations are negotiated between interviewers and candidates over the course of job interviews. Specifically, it analyses the participants’ uses of humorous utterances. Alongside an orientation to the explicit goal of mutual amusement, humorous utterances perform more serious tasks. The analysis explores the dynamic negotiation of the interviewer’s and the candidate’s affiliative identities over the course of their encounter. Even though each participant’s differential status is still prevalent in the enactment of and response to humour, the analysis highlights how humorous contributions act as a test of affiliation, bringing to light in-group membership and probing the participants’ future ability to work together.