Disability & Society, Vol. 15, No. 7, 2000, pp. 1019– 1039 Disabling Employment Interviews: warfare to work PAUL S. DUCKETT Division of Psychology, University of Northumbria at Newcastle, Newcastle Upon Tyne NE1 8ST, UK ABSTRACT Employment interview research displays a greater concern for rening employ- ment interviews to benet employers rather than prospective employees. The interviewee’s perspective is often overlooked. Further, generally scant attention has been paid to the interview experiences of disabled interviewees. In this paper I present ndings from a project that sought to understand disabled interviewees’ experiences of employment interviews. My analysis suggests such experiences were dominated by feelings of anxiety and manipulation, particularly when contextualised within contemporary labour market conditions. In this context, I reect on the need for ethical rather than technical concerns into employment interviews and how innovations in interview techniques may be having a negative affect on interviewees. I further stress the need to reject victim blaming ideologies when researching disabled interviewees’ experiences of employment interviews to counter the over emphasis of past research into changing the disabled person rather than the disabling interview environment. Background Between 1994 and 1997 I was involved as a community psychologist in a participa- tory action research project on the employment interview experiences of disabled people (Duckett, 1998a). During the two and a half years of eldwork I met a broad range of research participants including disabled and non-disabled people, people who were unemployed, employed and employers. Participants discussed their expe- riences of employment interviews during individual interviews, telephone interviews and focus group discussions. In the action phases of the project, where participants and I sought to turn research into practice, discussion occurred in welfare benet advice interviews (securing benet income for unemployed and disabled partici- pants), and consultancy and steering group meetings (targeting change in employer recruitment practices). In this paper I summarise themes that arose during these discussions. First, I briey review the empirical literature on employment interviews and then describe the literature on disability and employment interviews and employment discrimination issues. ISSN 0968-7599 print/ISSN 1360-0508 online/00/071019-21 Ó 2000 Taylor & Francis Ltd DOI: 10.1080/09687590020016386