The manager who conducted the interview was very friendly, explained the job responsibilities in fairly good detail, and seemed to have their own ideas. However, I’m not sure whether they were just painting an overly rosy picture, because it felt like many processes related to the actual job responsibilities had not been clearly defined. Still, during the interview with this manager, I genuinely felt, for a moment, that I really wanted to become part of their team~

The HR manager who conducted the interview had a very different attitude. Although we were job applicants and employers may occasionally seem to hold a higher position during the hiring process, the entire interview was conducted in a suspicious and condescending tone, which was genuinely very uncomfortable.

The HR representative was not a specialist in this position, yet kept judging the interviewee’s abilities based on her own ideas. She suddenly gave me a written test to complete on the spot, but repeatedly interrupted me with various verbal questions while I was answering. When I answered questions during the interview, she also kept interrupting me, then used various condescending phrases such as, “So basically, you don’t have any experience in this area, right?” and “So that means you only know how to use the basic functions” …

When we discussed salary, she said verbally that we were mutually discussing it, but if she didn’t approve of the lowest figure she offered, she would still ask you to lower your expectations, then ask, “So you can accept this figure, right?”

By the end, I was already somewhat upset by the interview, but I still kept a smile on my face until it was over. Internally, though, I had a lot of thoughts. This was truly the most unpleasant and rudest HR representative I have ever encountered.

Anyone planning to attend an interview should really consider this aspect carefully. Although the hiring manager’s attitude is the most important, HR handles all sorts of small and large administrative matters at work (leave requests, overtime applications, expense reimbursements, and so on). If the person is difficult to communicate with and lacks empathy, it will inevitably be extremely troublesome when you need to deal with administrative matters in the future.