Workplace reviews and discussion: 台灣豐田通商股份有限公司

Some employees are quite polite.

The position I interviewed for was “HR Manager.” Just looking at the title alone, one could tell that Toyota itself had not yet reached a conclusion about what kind of person it wanted for this position. In fact, during the interview, whenever I asked about “the plans, outlook, and objectives for the HR field over the next few years,” neither the Director of the Administration Department nor the higher-ranking executive could give a clear answer. (They did not even introduce themselves—just as I mentioned before, perhaps once people reach a certain level, everyone else is expected to know who they are automatically.) They only said, “Execute in accordance with the company’s needs.” Talking nonsense is unavoidable at work, but seeing it seep into recruitment for a new position was quite an oddity.

Starting with the first interview: Before the interview, I was given 30 minutes to complete a test with six questions. Three were short translation questions (Chinese to English, Chinese to Japanese, and Japanese to English), all apparently related to matters Toyota would ordinarily encounter in its business. There were quite a few specialized terms, so anyone without expertise in this area would probably find them difficult. The remaining three were questions and answers: what I knew about Toyota, what I thought Toyota’s strengths were, and my strengths and weaknesses written in English. I finished just within the 30 minutes, but my answers were not particularly good either. I have no idea how Toyota evaluated this result as part of the interview process.

The interview was conducted by four people: the two women responsible for HR, the assistant manager of what they now call the HR, General Affairs, and ITG department, and the Director of the Administration Department. Basically, they asked about my past experience, confirmed my spoken English and Japanese abilities, and asked why I wanted to join Toyota. I asked what issues the company faced in HR. The Director of the Administration Department replied that the first issue was the system and its integration. As an important branch of a Fortune Global 500 company that has operated in Taiwan for several decades, Toyota still had no HR system for recording personnel data and continued to use Excel. Feel free to have the experts out there analyze that point. When I asked about other HR-related implementation details, such as training and engagement, I roughly realized that Toyota’s thinking was still rather old-fashioned—which of course is not necessarily a bad thing; they could simply start doing these things from now on.

Because I felt that I had not done well on the test and that my answers during the interview had also been poor, I assumed I would probably be rejected. However, several days later, I received notice of a second interview. For the second interview, I had to prepare a presentation briefly introducing my experience and past proposals, as well as my outlook for the future. Since there was not much time left, I hastily put one together.

The second interview panel again consisted of four people: two managers whose ranks I did not know (neither was willing to introduce himself), along with the assistant manager and the Director of the Administration Department who had appeared in the first interview. These two managers whose ranks I did not know deserve special mention. Both were in their fifties. One was relatively composed, while the other displayed a serious lack of attention, constantly shifting around in his seat, making noises, dramatically flipping through my résumé, or looking at his phone. (At that point, I had already dismissed Toyota.) As soon as I entered, I began the presentation and self-introduction. I did not perform very well: I was overly nervous, so my delivery was disjointed, and the content was not particularly impressive. During the presentation, the inattentive manager suddenly laughed out loud. I paused for a moment and originally wanted to ask him, “May I ask what’s so funny?” (Perhaps saying “なにわろてんねん” directly would have been the better response.) In the end, I continued with the presentation.

After the presentation came a question period in which the two managers asked questions from all kinds of angles—whether intentionally or to test my ability to react on the spot. In response to questions such as, “You wanted to leave your previous job because of such-and-such a reason. Now that you have encountered the same reason here, wouldn’t you want to leave again?”—based on my many years of interview experience, I can say with near certainty that whenever an interviewer says something like this, you can dismiss the company. It shows that the speakers view resignation as being caused by a single factor and basically have no thought of “we hope to prevent this kind of situation from occurring in the company.” At least during the 30 minutes I spent answering questions in the second interview, I found this type of question utterly laughable.

The inattentive manager took the situation to a new level. One of his questions was, “You’ve changed jobs so many times, so your stability is insufficient. How am I supposed to be convinced that you can continue working here for a long time?” (As an aside, his spoken Japanese had a Taiwanese-accented Japanese style. At first, I could not even understand him and had no idea he was speaking Japanese.) The same point applies here: this kind of question revealed his lack of professionalism. There are many reasons people change jobs; making this kind of conclusion without first clarifying them—how, exactly, are you supposed to communicate with someone like that? Moreover, when I answered other questions, this inattentive manager interrupted me several times or simply did not seem to care much about what I was saying. Later, he apparently came up with a brilliant idea and asked me, “If you join the company and we transfer you to a sales position two years later, what would you do?” I said, “There would need to be a reason for transferring someone from HR to sales...” At that point, the inattentive manager interrupted me directly and said, “There is no reason—it’s just what the company does.” If there was no reason, wasn’t this question merely a loyalty test? I will leave it to everyone else to evaluate the kind of person who can ask such a question.

Finally, when it was my turn to ask questions, I asked Toyota—without much hope—about “the plans, outlook, and objectives for the HR field over the next few years.” The inattentive manager made an astonishing statement: “We don’t have any at present. We just act in accordance with company policy.” (So what, exactly, is the company’s HR policy?)

A few days later, they sent a thank-you letter. One of the reasons they gave was that when answering questions, I “did not answer directly and tended to talk around the point,” which also gave me a wake-up call. Was it because their questions did not concern any of the HR practices I had encountered in my previous work—even though they were looking for an HR manager, not a single person seemed to understand HR—and instead focused on other areas? Or was it because I failed to present myself as a good employee who would obediently follow the wishes of those above? Only Toyota knows.

In short, because of this inattentive manager, I also do not recommend that anyone try for this position or join this company. I record this here in the hope that those who come after me will not mistakenly fall into the same trap. Please do not make the same mistake.