Don’t Hide Your Regional Accent

A recent press release from Employment Minister Esther McVey states that job seekers shouldn’t try to hide their regional accent when attending job interviews.Is this REALLY a big concern? At vivoHR we do a lot of recruiting in many industry sectors, admittedly only generally across the South of England but I can honestly say I’ve never been shocked by a successful candidate turning up on day one of their new job speaking with an entirely different accent to the one they presented with at interview!Surely the employment minister has bigger fish to fry than this and IF it really is a problem should the emphasis not be on encouraging employers not to make unfair judgements based on accent rather than asking prospective employees to challenge the status quo and potentially risk missing out on as job opportunity?!