Disturbing Feelings in An Interview

Since I was constantly looking for part-time work to subsidize my life, I went through a lot of formal and informal interviews. In my experience, I found that one of the major problems with most interviews is bias. The bias is difficult for candidates to detect, but it always makes them feel strange.

First of all, for a candidate, a resume is indispensable and crucial. Even if you do not meet the interviewer, they can initially determine whether you are suitable based on your resume. However, a lot of prejudice occurs in interviews, especially when you find that the interviewer’s eyes become strange when they look at you, giving people a feeling of “you are not suitable for this position.” I have experienced such a prejudice, it is based on discrimination, especially when an Asian person is looking for a job in the United States. Many times, the cost of exposing this bias always seems to outweigh my cost of finding a suitable job, so I usually ignore it. Most importantly, you cannot find evidence that can prove their raical discrimination.

Secondly, many interviewers always ask a lot of personal questions during the interview process. For example, some interviewers will ask questions such as “Are you married?”, “How many people are there in your family?” or “Do you have children?” and so on. For these questions, I believe that many candidates will choose to answer in order to get the job, so do I. However, I do not think these questions are relevant to my qualifications for the job. Therefore, a problem that often arises during the interview process is that the interviewer seems to be superior to candidates, rather than in an equal relationship. The essence of the interview is a mutual selection process between a candidate and an interviewer, which establishes a relationship of equality between the two parties. However, in reality, interviewers ask more questions than candidates, and they ask more personal questions, which usually offends candidates. They take it for granted.

Based on these two major issues, what do you think are the effective solutions?