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The interview location near Songshan Airport was honestly quite far. Also, Chaoji mainly operates in housing rentals, and I only discovered upon arrival that they seemed to occupy almost the entire building. Due to the pandemic, one of the entrances had been sealed off, so I could only enter through the entrance on the Jianguo North Road side. I registered at the reception desk by scanning a QR code, and after waiting about 10 minutes, a woman who appeared to be around 20–30 years old and identified herself as HR came downstairs and took me to a conference room on the fourth floor. After entering a conference room with seating for about 10 people, HR gave me a standard résumé form and printed-out information from the employment website to fill in. One of the pages was a personal information authorization form, which essentially authorized the company to use the personal information I provided. Anyone unable to accept this should take note. The information requested included family background and personal details, as well as information about my previous company, including my supervisor’s information, etc.

I finished writing it in about 15 minutes. After HR collected it, she said she would take it upstairs to the interviewer. After waiting another 10 minutes or so, HR came back down and said that the interviewer had been called away by the vice president, so I had to wait a little longer. I went to the restroom and waited for nearly another 20 minutes before the interviewer finally arrived. He was a middle-aged man who looked to be over 50.

Rather than an interview, it seemed that he was more curious about me personally. He asked about things such as why I chose to look for a job, my reason for leaving my previous position, what I had been doing while unemployed, and so on. The conversation then moved to my family background, which made me feel somewhat uncomfortable. We discussed relatively little about the actual job. I also took two tests. One involved about 60 questions in which I had to determine whether the numerical figures on the left and right were identical—a one-minute test of quick recognition and attention to detail. The other consisted of four rounds of adding numbers, with a 30-second time limit for each round, testing reaction speed.

When we discussed the job, the main points were that working hours are 9:30 a.m. to 6:30 p.m., with the lunch break not starting until 1:30 p.m., and that the perfect-attendance bonus is 2,000. I found this difficult to accept, as it effectively discourages people from taking leave. Interestingly, when he talked about the perfect-attendance bonus, he also mentioned that overtime or make-up work could be used to offset it. Although this sounded like he was explaining a way to make up the hours, I interpreted it more as a roundabout way of saying that overtime is actually very common in this job. He said overtime would be paid, but considering the working hours and the distance to the company, working overtime would mean being tied to the company for even more of the day. In addition, he seemed to be looking for people capable of “teamwork,” which sounded more like the entire team works overtime until the job is finished.

Overall, I am very wary of companies that need to collect this kind of information. The authorization form was included together with the forms I had to fill out, which meant that regardless of whether I wanted to accept it, I had to fill it out. Also, I personally am used to interviews being formal and serious processes, whereas the other party seemed to think I lacked friendliness? Companies that try to get overly familiar do not feel like warm workplaces to me. They seem more like traditional companies that say on the surface that you are family, but in practice expect you to make unpaid sacrifices and work yourself to the bone. Furthermore, as mentioned earlier, the time I spent waiting after arriving may have exceeded the actual interview time. The entire process was somewhat uncomfortable and stressful. If the working hours are already this late and overtime is also required, they might as well not describe the position as a day shift.