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Earlier this year, I was asked to interview a man who was procured through a remote-staffing firm. He was based in Southeast Asia, and on his resume it looked

by jawns 5y ago

Earlier this year, I was asked to interview a man who was procured through a remote-staffing firm. He was based in Southeast Asia, and on his resume it looked like he met all of the competencies we needed -- including English proficiency. But on the call, I noticed that whenever I asked him a question, he would turn off his camera, pause for 10-20 seconds, answer the question, then turn his video back on. Eventually, I cut the call short and messaged the guy from the remote-staffing firm who had set up the interview to ask about this bizarre behavior. An investigation determined that the man was using a translator and really didn't speak any English whatsoever. I have no idea how he expected to be able to do the job if he had been hired, but I guess he thought it was worth a shot.

bananarchist 5y ago
Maybe the prospective salary made hiring a full-time interpreter a reasonable expense.
prepend 5y ago
Something like this happened to me years ago before video interviews. On phone interviews people would pause before every question, mute their line, then unmute and answer. This was odd because it happened on about 25% of the calls. A few times they forgot to unmute and we heard multiple voices coaching them in English and the local language. The offshore partner had someone sit in the interview to coach them with the proper answers. Oddly we didn’t change the offshore partner but management figured out some way that the partner stopped doing this. Or at least had interviewers answer fast enough with no lag.
Seb-C 5y ago
Reminds me of a senior tech lead candidate I interviewed a few months ago who was like "I don't know the answer, but can you give me a couple of minutes to sort on my thought?". Then very obviously started searching on internet (thinking he was hiding it well enough...). The question was along the lines of "how do you typically protect your code against sql injections?" (in a language and framework agnostic context)
kumarvvr 5y ago
As an Indian, this absolutely amuses me. There are a lot of gullible rural bumpkins out there. It is entirely possible that some recruiter made this guy do this, under the condition that once he is accepted to the job, he will have to pay 1 / 2/ x months of salary to the recruiter. The recruiter takes the money and disappears. The bumpkin will struggle for a bit in the job and then be let go or resign. However, he will add this to his resume, have the salary and joining letter as proof and try to get other jobs. Usually, these people do this so that their marriage prospects are better than their peers. The lengths people go to.
brianpan 5y ago
I had a similar experience early in the pandemic. I had to ask for the candidate to keep his video on. The voice was much more enthusiastic than the person's demeanor and eventually it became obvious that he was trying to randomly mouth words in sync with the person talking (and presumably doing the coding) then blaming it on lag. Yikes.

by jawns 5y ago

bananarchist 5y ago

Maybe the prospective salary made hiring a full-time interpreter a reasonable expense.

prepend 5y ago

Something like this happened to me years ago before video interviews. On phone interviews people would pause before every question, mute their line, then unmute and answer. This was odd because it happened on about 25% of the calls. A few times they forgot to unmute and we heard multiple voices coaching them in English and the local language. The offshore partner had someone sit in the interview to coach them with the proper answers. Oddly we didn’t change the offshore partner but management figured out some way that the partner stopped doing this. Or at least had interviewers answer fast enough with no lag.

Seb-C 5y ago

Reminds me of a senior tech lead candidate I interviewed a few months ago who was like "I don't know the answer, but can you give me a couple of minutes to sort on my thought?". Then very obviously started searching on internet (thinking he was hiding it well enough...). The question was along the lines of "how do you typically protect your code against sql injections?" (in a language and framework agnostic context)

kumarvvr 5y ago

As an Indian, this absolutely amuses me. There are a lot of gullible rural bumpkins out there. It is entirely possible that some recruiter made this guy do this, under the condition that once he is accepted to the job, he will have to pay 1 / 2/ x months of salary to the recruiter. The recruiter takes the money and disappears. The bumpkin will struggle for a bit in the job and then be let go or resign. However, he will add this to his resume, have the salary and joining letter as proof and try to get other jobs. Usually, these people do this so that their marriage prospects are better than their peers. The lengths people go to.

brianpan 5y ago

I had a similar experience early in the pandemic. I had to ask for the candidate to keep his video on. The voice was much more enthusiastic than the person's demeanor and eventually it became obvious that he was trying to randomly mouth words in sync with the person talking (and presumably doing the coding) then blaming it on lag. Yikes.