Trial by Fire - Helper Interviews

We'd decided to interview Helpers. I was as prepared as I was going to be.

Ms.C and I set off to the Maid Agency, armed with a memorized short bio of our family and a list interview questions. Ms.C had her interview questions too. I had printed up 10 blank copies, so she could record the answers right on them. I had a bag of snacks to dole out to Ms.C as required too.

We got off the elevator on the 12th floor and entered the fray. Picture a normal width hallway, but rather long (maybe 15 ft) crammed with about 30 people. Helpers were sitting or standing along one side of the wall and on the other side of the same hallway people were sitting face to face on tiny stools doing interviews. It was loud. I was told to come at 12 and it was 11:50, but I already felt behind.

I wove down the hallway and a woman popped out of door way about 3/4 of the way down and said "Why are you here?" I replied, "For interviews at 12" and was told "Wait here." Ms.C and I stood in what felt like a very random place in the main office for a few minutes till they came up with a regular chair for me and one of the little stools for Ms.C.

In the actual office here there was a row of 3 desks side by side. They plunked us down at the end beside the photocopier which kept going - printing off profiles of Helpers constantly. We placed our folders with our interview question on top of the photocopier piles of Helper profiles laid out on the desk. The Agency staff continued to reached in between and grab stacks of the profiles as we did our interviews. About 6 sets of interviews were conducted simultaneously in this office space. We were right at the doorway too, so addition to the photocopier noise every few minutes the Agency shouted through the door way a Helper name so that they would come do their next interview.

I reviewed my stack of 8 or 9 Helper Profiles and selected who to interview first. Each profile was 10 pages or more long, and included things like: photograph, age, height, nationality, religion, education level, marital status, number of siblings, number of children, children's ages, medical history, age and occupation of husband, mother and father. There were a self assessments of experience and preferences, lists of employers and duties. Some profiles had additional reference letters tacked on. It was a lot of information.

I knew I could interview them all and not knowing where to start, I quickly prioritized them mostly by whether they had children of their own and got down to the interviewing.  I started each interviews with: "We just moved to Singapore from Canada and have not hired a Helper before" in the hopes that it would excuse some of my blundering.  

I can say that I'm happy that I have conducted a lot of interview in the past. I figure I have hired at least 30 people over my career. Assuming that a I interviewed 6 people per job opening (which being very conservative), I must have managed at least 180 interviews, so at least I understood the process.

This was basically speed dating, but with salaries at stake. The noise made even harder to understand each other. I generally have a hard time understanding the local accents here and many people don't understand me. But, I was asking the right questions, because I was able to cut people within minutes of starting their interviews. It was pass or fail / in or out. As soon as I was sure they weren't a fit I just ended the interview. There were many potential employers there; I didn't want to waste their time.

I was glad I had brought Ms.C. She patiently waited for her turn to ask her questions. It was a quick way to assess of how they interacted with children. Some people were amused and connected with her over the questions on a serious or playful level. Other looked just confused, or even annoyed. But if you're not connecting with Ms.C on this, you're going to have a problem with the million of roll play games she's going to drag you into each day in our house. Generally Agency staff and the people with lots of experience with children looked thrilled at how Ms.C took her role in interviewing.

People mostly got cut because they didn't have experience managing multiple children. 3 children is pretty different than 1, and 1 child is the norm in Singapore. One Helper was cut because when asked how she would manage children who were not doing what they were told, she said she would tell their parents because children listen to their parents better. She obviously hasn't met my children. Another Helper only knew how to cook Chinese food. Not going to work; it's really hard for me to find any Chinese food dishes I can eat with a gluten allergy. In total I interviewed 5 people. It felt like a lot more, but we were learning.

There were 2 people who seemed like a decent match. So now what? My top 2 would go to our house for a House Viewing. I told the Agency who, and they called the first one back to talk to me again. I was confused and thought maybe they thought I wanted to interview her more. After a moment, I sent her away and she looked rather sad, and felt like I was missing something here. Yep, I was supposed to ask her to come to my house myself. After sorting out the misunderstanding, another surprise - they were coming right over.

Ms.C and I had been planning a fun afternoon, but now we raced home to clean the house and at least partially empty the room which would be for the Helper. Our first potential Helper arrived in an hour, and then the 2nd one about 15 minutes after the first one left. We gave them a tour of our place, and chatted a bit more about their experience to help Jonathan get a feel for them.

Jonathan and I realized we should have been discussing salary, benefits, work hours and specific job duties during the House Viewing. Now we're also trying to figure out if we should have the Helper's room already set up for them to view, or whether it best to let the Helper coordinate what they would like to have.

Ultimately neither Helper was a perfect fit, and seeing as this was our first round of interviews we've decided to interview more candidates. It was an exhausting experience, and we'll be doing it again next Sunday!