Things I Learned from Interviewing People

Since I’m the only local person in my department who speaks Japanese, I helped HR department when they’re interviewing a Japanese speaker staff. Well, besides looking for my successor, apparently my department decides to have a manager who speaks Japanese. Wicked!

I became a little bit used to interviewing people. It’s basically just questioning them in Japanese, which is I’m not that excel too (haha). But yeah it always makes them feel like “Oh God this girl can speak fluent Japanese!” or “Oh look this girl is so calm throwing questions! She must have lived in Japan for several years!” or at least that’s what I assumed seeing them all nervous and sweaty (yes, almost all the guys I interviewed were sweating).

Last Friday was pretty interesting. So there are 3 guys that we interviewed, let’s call them Mr. A, Mr. B, and Mr. C. Please note that most of the person I interviewed was older than me. I feel like a little princess who’s looking for a guy to amuse me because I’m super bored and don’t own a wifi router.

Here are things that I learned after interviewing them.

Mr. A

He went to a not-very-reputable university and took English Literature major. He studied for 3 years, did NOT finish it but instead went to Japan for some 3 years factory internship program. That’s where he got his Japanese language skill (d’uh!) but he doesn’t own a legitimate TOEFL certificate. What a lousy English Literature major student. And to be honest, his English was really not that good. He even requested to answer the question in Bahasa Indonesia! Dude, not cool.

After he’s back to Indonesia, he went to a different college, start from zero in computer major. The weirdest thing of this guy is when he described his job. He basically only did administrating job and a little translating in between, BUT he receives a much higher salary than I did! What the heck?!? I’m highly doubt that and believe he exaggerated his current salary, like, probably almost twice than the real salary he got.

Lesson learned:

-          - Do NOT ever request to change the language when you’re interviewed in a language other than your mother language. Just, don’t.

-          - Do NOT exaggerate your salary TOO MUCH. It’s OK to do it from time to time, but don’t over-do it.

Mr. B

He went to universities in Japan for both of his bachelor and master degree, graduate with summa cum laude GPA (perfect 4.00 GPA for his master degree), received the Monbukagakusho Scholarship, his TOEIC score was 825, have a JLPT N1 certificate. Bottom line, he’s not human. He’s a mutant with a super intelligent brain. Yet he’s very humble, calm and he even referred himself as “not very good in Japanese language”. I was ready to throw off my pencil at his face.

When my manager tells him about our business, he listened to it and asked some very good questions. I could see that this guy is really, really smart with eagle eyes that sees what human generally don’t see. He’s that good. And cool. And good looking. And married.

Anyway, beside my broken heart of seeing his wedding ring, this guy is top-notch but probably over qualified for the position. He expected high salary, which is OK considering his background.

Lesson learned:

-          - Be bold when questioning about the company and the job. You can see immediately what you’re gonna get through if you take the job.

-         -  Be humble. Even though it makes some people want to throw things at your face, it’s still a lot better than be a smug.

Mr. C

Firstable, this guy doesn’t speak good English and never took any TOEFL test. He’s currently working in an Indonesian company. When we asked him why he wanted to leave his job, he said that he wants to work in a international company. I think he meant was bi-national company since he only speaks Bahasa Indonesia and Japanese Language. International, you say? We wouldn't hire this guy, but for the sake of humanity, we still interviewed him. I don’t know why HR department sent him to us.

He has a really loud voice despite the fact the he also went to Japan for a 3 years factory internship. I guess he went to a part of Japan where people speaks loudly to each other. I don’t know what part of Japan is that, but oh well.

Lesson learned:

-          - Try your best to adjust your voice volume to match your surroundings.

-          - When you apply for an international company, for the love of God, SPEAK ENGLISH. Seriously.

Soo.. I’m not the one who’s going to choose them since I’m only helping. Not sure the management already picks the winner either. But it’s a good experience since I’ll be having some interview for my self too in the future *wink*.

The difference between being alone and being lonely

"Being alone is a fact, while being lonely is a state of mind."

-read somewhere in twitter

I’m a shitty introvert who actually like being alone but also needs to be in a crowded place sometimes. So, you’ll see me in a crowded place but looks … lonely (?). It gets me in a kind of ‘nowhere’ state when I was’ here’ but wishes to be’ there’, but when I actually get ‘there’ then I wish to be back to ‘here’. Haha, confusing, huh?

So it got me thinking, what’s the difference between being alone and being lonely? What kind of relation do these two words have?

You will know if someone is being alone when you see them sitting in a park without anyone sitting beside them and talk to them. That’s alone. You can actually SEE them being alone.

You see a person sitting in a bunch of people in a party, talking to each other, laughing, but secretly one of those people doesn’t feel quite the same happiness as others. Can you SEE it? No.

Being alone does not always mean that you’re sad because you don’t have a companion at the time. You CAN be happy even if you’re alone. Everybody needs a ‘me time’. So you have no right to judge a person when they go shopping alone or watch a movie alone. Especially when they look happy doing it. Even if they don’t show the happiness, I can still sense if someone’s enjoy shopping alone. Wow, introverts do stand with each other. #IntrovertsUnited

The other thing about being alone, for me, it’s more like an accomplishment after the ‘extrovert’ things I’ve been through all the weekdays. After 5 days in touch with the people in my office; from fun person who cheers me up to fucktards who makes my life turns to a sudden hell, I always need at least a day in 1-2 weeks of being alone. It’s like I’m charging my energy to mingle with people again. Trust me; dealing with people can be an energy-sucker

Being packed in a crowded laughing people does not always mean that you’re completely happy, either. Probably it is, for some of you. But for me, the shitty introvert, it’s not like that all the time. I like to be in the middle of a crowd; hell I even need it, sometimes. But when I run out of my extrovert energy, that’s when I feel I have to crawl back to my cave, just sit still in my short pants sipping ice tea while reading some books or watching sitcoms. And just laugh like Beavis and Butthead.

I can tell when loneliness attacks me. It’s when being alone doesn’t help anymore. It’s when being with another people, also, doesn’t help. 

So yes, I agree with the statement I saw when scrolling down my twitter timeline: “being lonely is a state of mind”. It doesn’t matter where you are, who you’re with, or what you do. When you FEEL lonely, you can’t help it.

Fortunately since loneliness is just a state of mind, you can turn around this situation by yourself. When you reach certain maturity, you WILL find something to prevent you to feel lonely. Most of the time people would just hit a party or meeting people, but in other case, being alone might help you. 

Funny how you can cure loneliness by being alone.