Two weeks ago, I held a massive job interview session to hire young Malaysian talents to join my organization. My managers had made all arrangements and recruitment agencies were sending candidates my way. Because of the sheer number of people that turned up, I told my managers that I would pitch in and interview the candidates myself. Boy, was I up for a surprise.
I decided to interview the first candidate that was assigned to me. He was a nice chap, who graduated from a local university in the East Coast. He had a high GPA, but had some serious shortcomings in his English subjects.
Suresh : Hello. Thank you for making time to come to our interview session.
Candidate 1: Hello. My speaking not so good, but I’m extremely bagus in IT.
Suresh : Are you aware that this job will require you to speak in English to our customers.
Candidate 1: Ya Boleh boleh. No problems.
Suresh : Can you please speak to me in English only please.
Candidate 1: My speaking not so good. But I can cakap with customers no problem.
I decided to end the interview there. I told myself that the candidate could have been the odd one out. I interviewed the second candidate.
Suresh : Hello. Thank you for making time to come to our interview session.
Candidate 2 : Hello. Agency say must know English. But can speak Mandarin ah?
Suresh : No, I need you to speak English.
Candidate 2 : But I cannot hor.
That was the second interview I ended prematurely. As the day went on, I started to notice a pattern that I knew all along. Because I hadn’t done interviews in a long time, I didn’t realise was that bad. From the 30+ candidates that showed up, we hired only 3. Why didn’t we hire more? The answer is simple. These guys had all the necessary technical skills required for the job. What was lacking was their inability to speak in the English language, which is a pre-requisite for my team because we deal with customers from all around the world.
It’s a huge huge shame for Malaysia.
oo is is a huge shame for malaysia..well i dnt have technical skills and im nt study in university bt one thing that i knw i can speak english well ..too bad
I guess what you meant was “their ability to speak”
I agree with you, the standard of English in this country is appalling. I am not referring to Manglish, which can be rather endearing (and I admit, I do speak this way also lah), but bad, bad grammar. This irks me to no end!