We just hired someone who barely speaks English
My company just hired a Sr QA Automation engineer who barely speaks English. They were a referral from one of the directors. During the feedback meeting, 3 people brought up communication as a problem and the person got 2 No’s out of 6 interviewers + coding part wasn’t that strong... I was one of the interviewers and I had to repeat every question at least 2 times during the interview. The justification to hire was “we don’t want to discriminate based on language”. This seems sooooo unbelievable to me, curious what the community thinks about this. SF, TC 215, YOE 6
Why not give this person a chance? Everyone has flaws and lack some or other soft skills. I do understand communication is very important, but I have worked with a person whose English was very bad and speak very loud! But he is the one of the smartest engineers I have seen. He will get the job done the right way!
Did you read the whole post? 3 out of 6 interviewers are leaning no hire. Based on what do you give them a chance?
I had a panel of 5 of which everyone flagged a candidate for communication gap. But I hired him and he is one of the best engineers in the team and bonded well.
It seems like your concern is sort of premature. Maybe give this person a chance to prove themselves before you judge whether they can do the job based on English speaking skills. Sometimes when you are multilingual your speaking skills lag behind your comprehension of written material. It’s not really an indication of an ability to do a job.
Well I think it’s not that he is judging the persons coding skills based on language but he is judging communication skills. Which is fair. It’s not only about coding, communication is a huge part of the job. And what you’re testing on the interview is how good you’re at overall job. Not just coding. For example personally and attitude is also important. If a person is very smart but when you ask them for help they say “I don’t give a shit what you need”, that’s also bad. Even though “they can do the job”, like you say. I think OP has a fair concern. It’s sad, sure, that it’s just a language, but like it or not - you do need to have good English to do the job well. A huge part of the job is communication aspect. So yeah OP I feel you. That is weird I agree. Good that your company is so nice and inclusive but that is going to be tough to work with that person. Hopefully they just came to US or something and going to try hard to improve.
What you described is attitude issue not a result of language barrier. I have seen the behaviors you described more often with people who speak English fluently.
Maybe your accent is too thick
Check if it is nepotism. This kind of stuff happens a lot in China. Cousin of director, buddy they went to school with, etc. My buddy had to babysit a shit head kid that grew up in California on his team. That kid never showed up for work on time and spent most of his time at the gym. He was there simply for the title for his resume.
Lol, nepotism is there from all regions. I work with indian wives because their husband is a bigshot, or sibling, sons/daughters of white americans. Some of the folks who got hired because of "nepotism" are really good at their job and some are not. Its as random as hiring someone from interview pool. Just make sure you can properly evaluate them.
If their code was up to snuff, great opportunity to lean in. If their code was meh and their communication made it difficult to understand, you have a bad combination potentially
I argued hard on behalf of a engineer who could barely speak english because their technical skills were stellar, but the team went with the other candidate, hipster female fresh out of bootcamp and no problem solving skills, because “culture fit”. Sounds like your team got it wrong, and I’ve noticed many teams seem to try so hard to not be biased that they are actually biasing in the opposite direction.
Yeah, it could be a problem but if you work closely with him/her you can figure it out. Not sure where you work but I deal with folks with all sorts of different accents and languages. It can be a challenge at first if you are not used to it but you will get used to it. If the candidate is proficient at what they do then go for it as its better than having who can speak english but sucks at their job. After a while the candidate's accent and communication will be better and he/she will be able to interact and see that communication is something the person needs to work on. I saw this with lot of fellow classmates who are FoB in my masters program and at work. Don't be deterred by this too much. Quite frankly this may be the norm in the future when all our jobs get shipped to overseas for cheaper rate; you'll have to work and find ways to communicate effectively on phone and webex.
What country are they from?
My guess would be China
China