When I first came to Canada, I barely knew any english. The language barrier made me retarded in the classroom at school. Maybe the same thing is happening here. The secretary of a hiring manager shoved a personality test into my face as I waited to be interviewed. I'm like, "can you please give me the english version?" and she looks at me like I just grew a plant from the top of my head. Em, lady... for your information, English is an official language here and just cuz I'm yellow doesn't mean I automatically know chinese.
Anyway, I was there only because a headhunting agency told me to be there. Basically, it was for a somethingsomethingsomething (whatt????) position and I should go the following day ASAP in case they already found someone.
Okay.
There were two interviewers, and two interviewees.
The other candidate was a guy from Swizterland who DID NOT SMILE throughout the whole thing, and spoke normal chinese. And I came from Canada who smiled too much and spoke strange chinese that was interspersed with random english and made up words.
I was asked "do you know why we hire University graduates?" or "do you know why we invest $$$$ in you before you even do work for us?" and "do you know the difference in mentality between the east and west?" (and their answer was arrogant as well) and "do you know where we place in our industry? that's right. NUMBER ONE" and "do you know what our market share is??? " and "are you ambitious?"
Do I want to work for a bunch of arrogant asses? Did I want to be there in the first place, pitted against an unsmiling swiss guy (he reminds me of a bull cuz of his answer "I had to work in harsh physical conditions for 18 hours straight and I DID IT. I don't mind hard work. I can do it.") against tame frail me who just smiled a lot and BSed about things like helping society and long term vision?
No my friends. No I did not. I just wanted to get out of there and eat dinner.
Then they made me watch a video. It was about how amazing their company was. The music had a lot of trumpets. I tuned it out at that point, thinking what kind of dinner I was going to eat after this cuz I thought the questions were over. BUT NO!! Interviewer A asked us what we noticed about the company's direction and strategy.
Swiss guy answered in a heartbeat. And before long, all heads turned to me. About 5 seconds later...
I made up something. "Global expansion and reaching out to more markets with more offerings."
"All very nice answers."
Thank God for the marketing course I just took...
The interviewers shooed us out as it was the end of their work day and the two of us stood in stony silence staring at the elevators until I broke the silence and we had a short conversation before we went our separate ways.
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