Workplace reviews and discussion: 百世佳實業有限公司

The company environment is bright and clean, and the staff responsible for reception were friendly.

Position interviewed for: International Trade Assistant

Written test: Yes.

A. Two pages of A4 international trade correspondence questions, five questions in total: two Chinese-to-English translations and three English-to-Chinese translations.

B. Short-answer personality test (for example: whether you would help a colleague in need, etc.)

C. 104 online personality test

Interviewers: HR and the head of the International Trade Department

1. HR: Described the job responsibilities and company culture in detail. HR repeatedly emphasized that the company culture was rather unique. Because it is a small company, employees need to cooperate with one another on various administrative and miscellaneous tasks, and staff in different positions assist one another. Therefore, there are more things to learn; one person is expected to do the work of several people. HR's attitude was friendly.

2. Head of the International Trade Department: I have truly never met anyone so gender-discriminatory. Since I am a man and most of my previous work experience was in administration and customer service, they began by criticizing the fact that this position does not hire men, saying that men are not attentive or meticulous. They would prefer a man who can drive and work in sales, and seemed puzzled that a man would apply for an assistant position. They appeared to think that men were not qualified for positions requiring greater care and attention to detail. After that, they kept nitpicking: they criticized my English correspondence for being written entirely in uppercase and also criticized me for writing too slowly. Yet they had not carefully read my résumé. Despite my international trade experience, they kept saying that my experience at a staffing agency had nothing to do with international trade. Later, I reminded the supervisor that I had international trade experience and had previously worked for an express delivery company similar to DHL. The other person was so arrogant that they would not even listen, replying only, “Mm!” Finally, they kept asking whether I had experience preparing quotations, producing export documents, and reviewing various export documents. HELLO!!!!! I had worked in customer service at an international express delivery company—do you really think I would not have done those routine tasks?

At one moment they said I spoke too quickly, and the next they said it was strange for a man to apply for an administrative position. No wonder this company is always short-staffed. They also seemed paranoid, repeatedly implying during the conversation that the company was made up entirely of women and that having a man work in an internal office role felt strange and frightening! HELLO!!!! As a gay man, I should be the one afraid of you!