Workplace reviews and discussion: 人類智庫數位科技股份有限公司

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1. The company’s chairman showed an extreme lack of respect for the applicant. The first interview lasted a full 50 minutes. Apart from spending 10 minutes discussing my previous work experience, he spent the remaining 40 minutes talking about history, without discussing any aspect of the job. It felt as if he was simply looking for someone to chat with. He was also extremely pro-China, praising the reform and opening-up policy, and criticized my level of ability and thinking when I expressed different opinions.

2. Before the first interview ended, I asked about the job responsibilities, but he did not answer at all. He only said that he would discuss suitable duties with his colleagues. It was obvious that they had already found someone and were merely looking for someone to chat with, with no intention of conducting a genuine interview.

3. A full month after the first interview, I unexpectedly received a call asking me to attend a second interview, with a request that I go for the follow-up interview immediately the next day. It was obvious that the person originally hired had resigned and that I was being treated as a backup candidate.

4. I had originally not planned to attend the second interview, but later decided to go and see what it was like. During the second interview, the company’s chairman did not remember anything about the first interview at all. He only remembered that I had interviewed a month earlier. He asked me to repeat my previous work experience, barely looked at my résumé, and even mispronounced the names of my former companies.

5. During the second interview, the company’s chairman asked me, “Didn’t I ask you to write two articles? You didn’t do it?” In fact, the first interview had consisted entirely of chatting; this had never happened. I directly replied that he had spent 40 minutes talking with me about history during the first interview and had never asked me to write two articles. Only then did he stop talking.

6. During the second interview, he still did not explain the job responsibilities. I directly pointed out that he had not informed me about them the previous time, after which he finally explained what the job involved. He also admitted that they had originally hired someone else, but that employee had been fired for trading stocks during work hours, so they contacted me again. At least he was honest about that. This was unlike the HR representative, who pretended not to know anything and said, “We have been continuously looking for people, so the second interview took place later.”

7. After the second interview, he admitted that the person previously hired to develop authors had received no responses and that the method might have been wrong. He asked me how I would develop authors, and I shared some of my own methods. We later discussed salary, and I agreed even though the salary offered was relatively low. I also proposed several ideas for running the business, which he said he agreed with. However, only when the interview ended did he tell me that they would be choosing one person from among two interviewees that day, which was shocking. I was originally told that I would be notified the next day about whether I had been hired, but by 11:00 there had been no notification. After I followed up, he finally replied by email that they had hired someone else.

Of course, whether to hire someone is the company’s prerogative, and there is nothing I can say about that. However, the degree to which the interviewers disrespected the applicant throughout the process was obvious. In particular, they used the interview to extract knowledge and methods from the applicant, then once again treated the person as a backup candidate, without even politely informing me that I had not been hired. This was very difficult to accept.

Summary: Anyone planning to interview with Renlei Intelligence Company in the future should consider the decision carefully.

The publishing industry may indeed be a sunset industry in need of transformation, but a company that lacks even basic respect for applicants reveals much about its cultural standards and management philosophy.