Interviewer

It’s been quite a long time since I’ve had to do this, but I had to interview someone today.  Admittedly it wasn’t just me, I was one of about 8 or 9 people, so I had to make the most of my 30 minute slot.  Do I go hard with some unusual questions (if you were an animal, what would you be?), or do I just lob out some easy ones for the candidate to put away (describe your strengths and weaknesses).  Tough one, as I had already formed some opinions just based on the CV.  If I was the hiring manager, I wouldn’t have brought him in for face-to-face interviews.  I wouldn’t have even given him a phone interview.  His CV was riddled with grammatical errors – a classic example of Chinglish.  However most of the people interviewing him are Chinese, including the hiring manager, so I suspect my opinion doesn’t hold much sway.  So I just went for some standard questions, nothing that wouldn’t result in a decent response with the slightest bit of preparation.  For me, this was mostly about testing his communication skills – if his written English wasn’t great, how would his spoken English be.  And could he handle my accent.  And how did it go?  Well, when e-mailing my completed interview assessment form to the hiring manager – my accompanying e-mail quite simply and bluntly said “I don’t think I can recommend him for a senior position.”.  It wasn’t so much the communication skills, which were perfectly adequate, as it was the elusiveness of his answers – no specifics and no details, I think hiding a major lack of experience for the level he was applying at that his CV maybe didn't make clear enough.  I think the open position must have got posted recently because we’ve got quite a few people coming in over the next few weeks, so expect this will be the first of many similar interviews.