Is it okay to do interview in language other than English if the candidate's native language is not English?
I am talking about Microsoft HQ in US . Recently interacted with few newly hired candidates (Some fresh out of college) and given the trouble they had communicating their ideas was wondering if their interview was done in Mandarin instead of English. I had heard rumors before but always dismissed them. Are HR fine with such practices. Is technical/programming skill more important than communication skill for engineers? Of course my experience could be an outlier where our group has teams with zero diversity and speaking Mandarin in scrums/team meetings is common but curious to know others' experience.
That's funny. SDEs should at least be able to get a B in English 101 class. I believe the SDEs in Microsoft China office are also required to have basic English communication skills because all docs are in English and inter-team collaboration meetings are also conducted in English.
No. This is setting them up for failure. They must be able to communicate with fellow employees.
You would be doing them a disservice in the long run if there is a serious language barrier. Their effectiveness would be hindered and their careers would be plagued by low momentum. As much as I like diversity, I feel it defeats the purpose if it can't be leveraged. Though that said I would probably tolerate a few technical words in another language. Since vocabulary is something they can fix.
If their tech skills are strong and language skills are weak, they might fit in a team which uses their preferred language. Sure, it's not great for their career in the English-speaking world, but it doesn't mean they are useless! Don't shut them out completely!
As long as it's not in the US
Do if you plan to never have this person talk to anyone... Will you find translators for people that are french, Italian, Indian, etc. If not, you're sort of discriminating against the latter...
No, I'm pretty sure this is against policy. I've been to recruiting events in other countries and I have never seen this
No, that's ridiculous. English is the language we all converse in. Interviews should never happen in any other language than English
But the new grads sat for GRE and TOEFL, right? How did they manage at collegešÆ
Cheating?
GRE score does not say much about peopleās ability to converse in day to day life. TOEFL, may be, but again exam vs real life is much different.
Lol my manager once asked me if we should interview a diversity candidate in mandarin. I told him to gtfo. English is the language we all normalized on. I had to learn it, everyone should learn it.
No. Just no. š