Last Friday I was bestowed with the honor of interviewing potential new hires. Yes, it’s college recruiting season everywhere around the world, except in Canada, where the entire nation now relies on the following site for future employment (Keith, I expect a commission for that). I was assigned three young’uns to interview for the entire afternoon, which was daunting given how my brain doesn’t really start functioning unless it’s between the hours of 5pm-9pm on Saturday nights. The idea of asking the same set of questions three different times and forcing myself to nitpick each of their responses was something that was going to be quite a challenge for me.
I always thought if I managed the whole hiring process, everything would be so much more efficient. First of all, the only screening question that would be necessary would be: “Male or Female?” Once you filter out all the dudes, then the follow-up questions would be, in order: 1) are you married, and 2) how badly do you really want this job? Then it’s all improv from there.
Of course, I’m kidding. The benefit of working for a reputable MNC is that the people who make it this far and are sitting in front of me sweating bullets are usually super-bright and super-hardworking. For any of you looking for a great example of irony, look no further than the fact that super-slacker like me ends up deciding the fate of these overachievers.
Although to the untrained eye, the Chinese population is the model of heterogeneity, there’s actually quite a melting pot if you take a closer look. One of the ingredients in this pot is the upwardly mobile, aggressive, career oriented college graduate hungry for success and vindication. Since I was interviewing these people, I tried to be as serious as possible prior to meeting them, to give all their hard work and effort the proper respect.
Of course, that lasted less than ten minutes, when one of the interviewees started describing a recent outdoor event he/she organized for his/her class. The description went something like this:
I dropped my pen and had to shut my drooling mouth with my bare hands. Of course, through the rest of the interview I had visions of dozens of stoned Chinese MBA students running around naked in the forest, which absolutely undermined any sense of objectivity I was trying to instill into the interview process. Sure, I realize that there is a slight communication gap, and this particular interviewee was using the word “high” as a synonym for (pick one) “rush,” “happiness,” “joy.” Still, I couldn’t help but categorize her as a stoner in my head, and so I eventually just stopped the interview midway through and offered her the job.
