Those Nightmare Interview Stories are True (and Not)

She kept tearing the piece of wrinkled scrap paper into smaller squares. Another tear. Another shape. Incredible.

I made a conscious note to ease up on her with my interview questions.

So what type of work environment do you prefer?

There you go. That's a freebie. I smiled and tethered my inner monster interviewer persona on a tight leash.

Umm. Another tear.  An open work environment? She left it with a vague, slightly hopeful upward accent, as if she was throwing it out there to see if I would like that answer.

I nodded, in my best professional nod, holding back my natural tendency to put people at ease by filling in the silences and empathizing about their childhood/ relationship/ work.

And what kind of supervisor do you work best with? I sipped my panda cup slowly to buy her some time to think.

Somebody who gives me freedom to design? She looked towards the corner of our conference room for an escape plan and found none. All of a sudden, something somehow snapped somewhere.

She buried her honest round face with both her hands and wailed I'm just not emotionally well enough to handle this! 

I looked up, startled by the unexpected change in conversation temperature.

My previous boss used to stand behind me and watch what I was designing and it would just send me into a panic and I would blank out. He told me to suck it up and keep working. I thought I had gotten over this, but today I realize that I haven't! I'm so sorry! I should have just stayed home with my baby. I'm just not emotionally equipped to do this!

Her shoulders heaved up and down with alarming frequency. I scrambled to put my cup down and reached out to pat her awkwardly. I told her that it's normal to feel nervous during an interview and that I didn't think any of those things about her. I gave up my interviewer facade and just spoke calm and confidence to her. Handing over her previous designs, I pointed out the highlights she should later emphasize to the HR director.

After she regained the courage to put her hands down and let me see her face again, I sipped at my panda cup and finished my water. It was only 11:14 am and I had already reached my 8 cups of water quota that day. I patted her once again and summoned HR.

She was 35.

-----

I did five interviews yesterday. All were incredibly memorable for different reasons.

I'm young enough in my career that I remember very well the panic I felt when gearing up for yet another skype interview and limiting the fiddling to under the table and resisting the urge to fix the runaway strand of hair when the suits were asking you, weighing you, and finding you wanting with each seemingly innocuous question.

Now that I'm sitting on the other side of the table though, I realize that while interviewers are evaluating for potential crippling weaknesses, most of them (myself included) do want to find the good in the interviewee. They are not trying to fail you despite the professional distance they maintain. Most often, apart from just experience and capability, interviewers look for the flash of personality, the surprising honesty, the refreshing confidence, the reason why they would want to sit next to you on a 14 hour flight. So as I've been telling some of my job-seeking friends who are so naturally brilliant to begin with - don't let what you think interviewers want to see obscure the "you" who would get the job. Give the interviewers a little credit and believe that they are nice human beings and see them as somebody you just met at a party who just genuinely want to know you better. Then treat them as your best friend's mom who tends to ask way too many questions when you're eating cookies in her kitchen. It might even end up being a "fun" experience.

Oh, and stop tearing at pieces of scrap paper. You never know if the interviewer has recently launched a "reuse our paper" campaign at the office or not.

I interviewed her and we laughed through the whole thing.

Now we're each other's biggest cheerleader during the 

company ping pong tournaments. 

Preggo Diaries (From a Non-Pregnant Girl)

I knew this day would come eventually. I just didn't expect that it would happen so soon.

Virtually within one day of finding out she was pregnant, girl 1 all of a sudden started waddling in a maddeningly slow pace, nursing her thermos of herbal tea in her hands, and painstakingly steadying every chair before lowering her imaginary weight down on it.

The day before, she was rock climbing and bouncing around with the best of us.

Then girl 2 also announced that she was pregnant by first sending a lawyer's letter invoking China's overly progressive maternity law, kindly informing us that we had to keep her on regardless of lack of performance and attendance for the next two years until her child was weaned. She also accompanied it with an immediate request for three months off work to relax during her first trimester.

I had never felt so much angst over somebody else's pregnancy.

Perhaps it's because I have never been pregnant. Or wasn't raised in a traditionally Chinese household. But either way, it is stretching my Asian imagination to fully comprehend some of the 'musts' surrounding pregnancy.

After the dual baby announcements were made, the two ladies started fussing about seat arrangement. Apparently they could no longer sit next to (aka three feet away from) the printer because the printer is a source of radiation.

Yeah. Radiation.

Girl 2 can't even work on reports from home because the laptop has too much radiation. But she can use her iPad and watch TV with reckless abandon.

Girl 1 says that she can't do conference calls because five minutes on the phone is her max. Once again, radiation.

They even wear special flimsy aprons all day around the office, which supposedly can shield their baby from radiation.

I finally put my foot down when they begin wearing pajamas to work.

I have always thought of myself as a sympathetic leader who encourages people to tend to their family/ personal needs first. When they're looking drowsy in the afternoon, I tell them to go home. When they're alone at home, I call to see if I could bring dinner over.

But I still have to insist on some work. So, I finally explained that no pregnant woman in America has ever heard of the concept of guarding against radiation in every day electronics. They looked shocked.

Really?! 

Yeah, people tend to go about their normal lives up till the last few weeks of pregnancy. 

They thought about it.

Well, Americans are naturally more built to have children. Look how big and fat they can get.

See. Can't win with logic.

A foreign colleague suggested that I talked to the HR lady to ask her how to best communicate with them about maintaining productivity during this special time. Then I realized that they got their magical radiation-proof aprons from her.

Resigned, I signed off on their requests for time off. Three months for one. One month for the other. And they both just got pregnant. After they give birth, they will each need another four months off for the recovery period. Chinese women are even more fanatical about post-birth rituals. No stepping outside of the house for both mother and child. No makeup. No cold drinks. No showers.

I suppose, in that state, I wouldn't want them to come to work any ways.

Magical Aprons.

It's quite a big industry here.

Little Questions for Little Girls

Yesterday as I was performing my sisterly duties of straightening Jody's hair, I asked her about the dress she was getting tailored for the big school dance. We gossiped about the tailor's poor quality and lack of responsiveness while brainstorming hair styles that would go well with her outfit.

Then I looked into the mirror at my favorite 13 year old who grinned back at me, curving her dancing brown eyes into crescent moons shaped like mine. She was growing into a beautiful young woman, alternating between exaggerated confidence/ aggression in basketball and poetry composition and the fidgety awkwardness of figuring out how to smooth out her naturally bouncy locks, checking off yet another intangible prerequisite of popularity.

All of a sudden, I remembered a Huffington Post article that Mike sent me a few days earlier about how we should engage little girls in conversation about what they're thinking rather than what they're wearing.

So, carefully avoiding burning my fingers on her straightening iron, I asked her what she was reading.

Oddly, I was hesitant.

What if she wasn't reading anything at the moment? Did that question make me sound "mom-ish"? Was it too serious for a girly getting-ready-together chatter? Who (apart from book club ladies) would ask that?

She fiddled with her hair tie. I picked another piece of hair to straighten.

Oh, I am reading the Hobbit, but really I'm loving Greek mythology right now.

She told me about the differences in Greek and Egyptian mythological structural patterns. I learned about her favorite Greek Gods and heard some stories with seemingly dubious morals.

Then, she turned around and asked What are you reading?

I shared with her a little about The Innovator's DNA and how I had always wondered if successful entrepreneurs were simply born and not made and whether I could teach myself to become more innovative. As I build our startup, I always felt insecure about being a more delivery-driven nerd and not necessarily the wild hippie innovators that were featured on Time magazine.

In between my little brother walking in to show us his toned abs and asking for an opinion on his tie, we discussed how we could be creative not only with art, but also with processes, people, product, sales, and team building.

As I added the final touches to her hair, Jody turned around and hugged me. Tight.

With Jody at a Palestinian market.

That conversation could have been a forgettable no brainer had I not asked that simple question what are you reading? 

In fact, now I wonder how many such missed opportunities I've had with my sisters and my friends.

Cute dress. Love your hair. OMG I hate you - you're so skinny now! Where did you get that?

Us girls tend to resort to these types of compliments and conversation starters when we see each other. Even though I try to consciously compliment behavior rather than looks (and achievement), I often catch myself falling back into the familiar pattern with the group of teenage girls whom I teach at church.

How we compliment each other matters, regardless of the gender of the recipient, because that's how we communicate what we care about. We send the right message to our girls by first asking the right questions. We can't tell them to ignore what the world tells them about their waistlines or their hair when that's what we point out first with our admiring eyes.

I won't lie - I can never suppress a smile whenever a boyfriend whispers into my ear that I am very attractive to him at that moment. Or when my parents look up and tell me that I look beautiful in that church dress when I walk down the stairs.

So, I'm not saying that we should refrain from noticing and complimenting each other on physical attributes. But we definitely should be more aware of the balance of compliments and conversations we generally have, particularly with our little girls. Because little girls like to please and they please based on what we tell them is pleasing. So please tell them that it's wonderful they are trying so hard to work through those complicated Math questions, or inviting the new kid at school to eat lunch at their table, or signing up for the competitive debate team. Tell them things that matter even if you only have five minutes. Because those five minutes add to 35 minutes every week and 1820 minutes every year - all precious minutes of helping them become the strong, kind, and intelligent women this world needs.