Highlighting your intercultural competency in the Peace Corps interview

The challenging, exciting and mind-opening intercultural journey that is Peace Corps service begins with the interview process, where you can share the experiences that have shaped you as a candidate. We want to understand the activities and interactions that have helped you develop intercultural competency—a core skill that you will cultivate and build upon as a Volunteer in service.

The Peace Corps considers intercultural competency to be a key skill that helps Volunteers understand and bridge differences in communities abroad as they work with partners to achieve Peace Corps’ mission and three goals. We discuss and assess this core competency throughout your interview to become a Peace Corps Volunteer.

The Peace Corps views intercultural competency as the ability to interact effectively and appropriately with people of different cultural backgrounds in complex environments.

Being effective means being able to do what one is intending to do, such as communicate a message or accomplish a task.

Being appropriate means doing things in a way that is considered reasonable and/or respectful within a cultural context. This includes recognizing your own cultural programming, demonstrating cultural humility, understanding concepts specific to a culture, perspective taking by seeking to understand a culture, and navigating intercultural situations. Intercultural competence involves honoring the dignity of others while also remaining authentic to yourself and your core values.

You will recognize intercultural competence being explored in your interview when your placement officer asks you to discuss living and working with people from another culture. Some applicants may give examples of living in a dorm or other shared living space with international roommates. While that can be an acceptable scenario to discuss in the interview, specifying an experience where you have lived or worked in one culture over an extended period (such as time spent in a volunteer, work, live, or study abroad program) gives us the most insight into you and your skills. This type of example better equips you to discuss the elements of the culture where you had to make adaptations in your own programming or behavior to build positive, effective relationships.

While sharing an experience of interacting with people abroad is great, you may also discuss experiences in your own community or country where you have had to demonstrate intercultural competency. For example, you could talk about working or living with people of different age groups or from different regions of the U.S., immigrants or refugees, people with disabilities, or neurodiverse (e.g., autistic, Down syndrome, etc.) individuals. Your placement officer will want to know what you learned from that experience and how you transferred what you learned to a new experience, ideally one working or living interculturally.

The Peace Corps places great emphasis on intercultural competency because it is so important for integrating into communities, learning languages, and communicating—core job functions of a Peace Corps Volunteer.

A key aspect of intercultural competence is cultural humility, a trait that placement officers observe in successful Volunteers when visiting Peace Corps host countries. Cultural humility is viewed as one’s ability to suspend judgments (positive or negative) about other beliefs or cultural practices; a willingness to go beyond one’s comfort zone in order to grow and learn; and a willingness to explore or reconsider one’s own culturally shaped judgments and/or conclusions.

Most Volunteers enjoy the stimulating process of diving into a new culture, as they encounter beliefs, traditions, and activities in their host countries that often contrast with their own. Intercultural competency will be something you develop throughout your Peace Corps service. Arriving to your placement interview with examples that indicate your willingness and aptitude to build this competency will stand you in good stead.

Read more about the Peace Corps’ intercultural approach.

Learn more about the Peace Corps’ application process.