Last year, in 2016, I interviewed for a graphic design position. After submitting my résumé, I received an email with 7–8 questions; only after replying would they evaluate whether I could get an interview. On the day of the interview, there were roughly 10-plus women and 2–3 men inside. The company environment felt fairly pleasant: coworkers chatted and interacted with one another and played with a cat (?). First, there was a one-hour banner-design test, followed by a 15-minute test with 10 logical-thinking questions. After that came a series of interviews. I was asked far too many questions—around 20 in total—and talked for about 40 minutes. They were mostly the usual questions: introduce yourself, why you wanted to join this company, explain what they do, why you left your previous job, how you overcome problems, and so on. I suddenly wondered whether their HR department (?) had too much free time and had set up too many meaningless hurdles.

The schedule was five days a week, with weekends off and public holidays off; working hours were from 10 a.m. to 7 p.m. Later, when the topic of pay came up, although they had initially told me that they were only recruiting part-time employees (student workers), the hourly wage listed on 104 was NT$120–200 (the Labor Bureau had not yet raised the minimum wage last year). I had hoped that I could negotiate the rate—perhaps a starting wage of over NT$150—but they already had a fixed, miserly pay scale: NT$120 to start, NT$130 after three months, and another adjustment after six months. They were not considering hiring full-time employees at the time, and the company did not have a graphic designer or offer any opportunity to become a full-time employee after working part-time. In other words, they wanted to hire a professional graphic designer at an hourly rate; doing the math, the monthly pay would not even reach NT$22,000. Is this not looking down on graphic designers? Those looking for full-time work should not waste their time at this company. They only seem to want obedient, gullible, cheap part-time or intern labor, while several of the same perennial openings remain posted indefinitely.