西門子股份有限公司

The happiest part of the interview was probably having coffee.

Foreign-investment company on the outside, Taiwanese company at its core; overall, it was terrible.

Job title: Project Engineer

First, a supervisor called me to arrange the interview. We mainly discussed my work experience and did a brief spoken English assessment.

The position was primarily focused on power systems. We talked for 45 minutes and got along very well.

The discussion covered the demanding workload: having to arrive by 7 a.m. every morning and working until 7–8 p.m.

I said that I could accept hard work, but the benefits had to be adequate for me to consider joining, so a second interview was arranged.

Then began an astonishing interview.

Unfortunately, the person interviewing me was not the supervisor who had called me.

The person who came was an ABC—just by listening to his accent, I could tell he was not Taiwanese.

The test consisted mainly of two questions, which I had to answer on a whiteboard:

Q1) Please explain the SCADA architecture.

A1) I drew the SCADA interface, operation, digital monitoring, and alarm table that I had designed from scratch.

But this supervisor was not satisfied and still wanted me to provide the architecture.

If you know about SCADA architecture, please prepare for this question. This supervisor will ask it.

I personally had no idea what he wanted to ask.

Q2) Please draw any single-line diagram.

A2) I drew a three-wire circuit diagram, but was rejected.

He said I had to draw a single-line diagram.

I have been doing electrical distribution since high school, and have designed circuit diagrams and written programs up to the present, but I had never heard this term before.

My inner reaction was: Could you please speak plainly?

If you are going to interview, please prepare how to design a protection scheme for any type of load using a single-line diagram.

Finally,

my base salary at a Taiwanese company was NT$1.xx million, and I asked for NT$1.xx million × 1.15%; that was the level of compensation that might have attracted me.

Their response was:

Siemens, as a foreign company, no longer offers benefits as good as it used to.

Based on his personal assessment of me, I was probably worth about two-thirds of that salary.

Moreover, I would be eliminated after the probationary period.

My inner reaction: A foreign company’s salary cannot compete with a Taiwanese company’s.

The work is also so demanding.

How do you expect to hire anyone?

Overall, this was simply a waste of time for me.

I took the high-speed rail and a taxi from Tainan, costing NT$3,500.

I spent a week preparing my Chinese and English resumes and spoken English, and none of it was put to use.

In exchange, I got one astonishing foreign-company interview experience.

Think twice before interviewing with Siemens.

Siemens is a very special company. Every engineer has performance targets and must also adjust their work content according to the company's needs. It is a highly unique job that requires a very high level of self-management. Therefore, if you are particularly good at identifying problems and proposing improvement solutions, you are welcome to join us!

A few reminders

1. If you are not able to independently achieve your targets, please do not try this job lightly.

2. Self-management and arranging work progress can be quite stressful.

3. You must be willing to adjust your working hours according to on-site needs (including overtime).