Workplace reviews and discussion: 七棵橡樹國際有限公司

The company is located near Dihua Street and Yongle Market. You can find many interviews with the person in charge online, including her personal background and the ideas behind establishing the brand. The company is in a two-story mezzanine-style building. On the first floor, sewing machines and tailors are mainly used to produce clothing. When you go upstairs, you first see piles of denim inventory; the office is farther inside, while the other side has a simple table and chairs for meetings. The interview took place there. It is a clothing startup that has retained the traditional apparel-industry environment, so the company appears to combine old and new. Although the person in charge and key employees are young, you can still see the characteristics of a traditional garment factory, such as a warehouse with piles of old clothing existing alongside the office environment.

Next, regarding the interview experience: the interview notification was sent very suddenly in the evening, asking me to interview the next day, so the entire arrangement felt rushed. When I arrived, I was interviewed by the person in charge (if you have searched for her interviews online beforehand, you will know who she is). She then asked whether I had brought my résumé, even though there had been no prior notice, so that was naturally impossible to prepare for. I began with a brief self-introduction and described my previous work experience, but I felt that she was not particularly interested in listening. Before I had finished speaking, she would move on to other questions. She then introduced the company, which was more or less the same as what I had found beforehand: a small startup with fewer than ten employees. This means employees need to take on multiple roles. In addition to finance, the position also covers administration, purchasing, general affairs, and warehouse management, as mentioned in the job posting.

She also directly stated that people in this position generally do not stay long, because most candidates expect to handle only finance-related work. This is also characteristic of a small company. She mentioned that other roles, including sales, also require employees to take on marketing and planning responsibilities. As for other policies, the company follows the Labor Standards Act, and profits at the end of the year are distributed equally. She did not mention much else.

The remaining details were things I only learned because I asked, including the internal systems used, cost calculations, the various minor tasks involved in packing and shipping orders, and whether there would be someone to provide a handover. Only at the end did she say there would be a second interview, and then it was over. The whole experience felt very rushed. I do not know whether it was a problem with the interviewer’s interviewing technique, but she did not seem interested in asking many questions. Alternatively, after asking a question, she would simply stop once I answered, or redirect me elsewhere before I had finished answering. This made me feel that she was not genuinely interested in asking questions, but was merely asking for the sake of asking. She only asked whether I was still employed or currently interviewing when discussing my potential start date. Overall, it felt as though the company had hastily brought someone in for an interview without having a basic understanding of the candidate. Although she mentioned that it was a startup with a young team, she did not communicate the company’s distinctive or attractive qualities to the interviewee. Instead, it gave the impression that a small company would involve a wide range of miscellaneous tasks. Mentioning the high turnover among current employees, together with the fact that the environment was not neatly organized with clearly separated inventory, office, and meeting areas, also exposed the company’s shortcomings.

If you receive a sudden interview invitation, I recommend considering it carefully. Otherwise, you may easily arrive to find that the other party is unprepared and knows nothing about you, conducting the interview while looking through your résumé and asking questions at the same time. Interrupting you while you are still answering also suggests that they have not thought through what they want to ask, making the entire interview feel like forced small talk.