Interview norms are not universal: the US and the Nordics

Most interview advice is American advice with the flag removed. The practice itself varies by country: across 959 organizations in 20 countries, national culture — uncertainty avoidance, and to a lesser extent power distance — explained real differences in how extensively selection methods are used at allRyan et al. 1999 · strong evidence
The classic cross-national survey of selection practice; even structure itself is unevenly adopted..

Self-promotion pays differently

What candidates think they should do also varies. In a ten-country study of intended self-presentation, impression-management tactics were rated more important in cultures emphasizing embeddedness, mastery and hierarchy — with the American sample as the explicit exception to the patternSandal et al. 2014 · moderate evidence
N = 3,509 across 10 countries, Cultural Impression Management Scale–Applicant.. And what raters reward is not neutral either: in videotaped evaluations, the advantage went to frequent self-praise and active ingratiation — styles the authors describe as paying off in the (Western) interview context, parenthesis theirsPaulhus et al. 2013 · moderate evidence
222 raters; the payoff to self-promotion is rater-culture-dependent, not universal..

The bluntest single measure is GLOBE’s assertiveness-practices scale, read directly from the project’s primary data: the United States scores 4.55 — 11th of 62 societies — while Finland (3.81), Denmark (3.80) and Sweden (3.38, last of all 62) anchor the bottom of the tableGLOBE Phase 2 data · strong evidence
Societal assertiveness practices, 1–7 scale across 62 societies — parsed from the primary spreadsheet.. A rubric calibrated on American norms systematically under-scores Nordic candidates for doing exactly what their own market rewards.

The distinction we coach instead

Our register rules rest on one distinction, and it is product framing built on the evidence above rather than a single measured finding: naming your own contribution and elevating yourself above others are different acts. “I made the call to ship incrementally” is a factual statement about who did what — every market requires it, because an interviewer can only score what they can attribute. “I was the strongest engineer on the team” is a comparative claim, and it is the second act, not the first, that understated cultures penalise. Candidates from those cultures often suppress both because they were taught to avoid the second. That conflation is the coachable error: we coach the first everywhere, and never demand the second in a Nordic register.

One honesty note travels with everything on this page: most interview research is built on North American samples. Where we know the norms differ, we say so — and where we do not know, we do not guess.