'If you are honoured enough to join our company..."

Last Thursday I took part in a recruitment meeting for our company at the leading university in Xian. Officially due to the snow, although more probably due to the low salary on offer, attendees numbered around the 40 mark.

The presentation was delivered in a lecture room by our 'boss', the woman married to the Actual Boss. I used to think she was quite formidable, but have come to realise that she is hopelessly unqualified for this position. In fact, the whole company reminds me of a monarchy, with people being in high positions or promoted depending on their 'guanxi' (relations) with the other important people. Skill and ability are strictly secondary. It sounds a bit of a cliche to say this about China, but this is what was told to me the day after by the former head of the translation department. To save face, she wasn't sacked directly, but put in a position where leaving was the only real option. It's grim up top.

Anyway, back to the presentation. She fumbled about for 5 minutes with the computer, which turned out to be only preparation for even greater fumbling later on. Even if she had remembered to introduce herself, such was the paucity of her comments and apparent lack of knowledge about the company that the attendees must have been wondering 'Who is this woman', 'What does this company do again?', 'Why is her hairstyle like that of a racoon?', etc.

After skipping over unimportant facts like the nature and requirements of the job, etc, she went on to the bulk of her presentation - showing photos of Indonesia and Sudan, where the company have staff working overseas. She had turned into Judith Chalmers, telling us the delights of beaches and lobsters in Northern Sumatra. My favourite picture was the one of the outside of the car park building at Jakarta Airport - truly a decision-maker for those potential employees.

Then onto the videos. She decided to show some footage of the New Years Party. Just as my feeling of mortification was setting in (me in a dress is not pretty), I was saved by her terrible computer skills as she did not know how to press the 'Play' button on Windows Media. My favourite clip was of two people repairing an old, two wheeled wooden cart next to a pile of coal. So this is the high technology of which you speak! Sign me up!

Our current team of English translators suffers from the slight hindrance of not being to speak or understand English, so this time I interviewed all the people who had not already left to test their English. The level was extremely good. The head of the translation department (age:23) only came to this company by accident because she thought it was a state-owned company, and I got the feeling some of these guys might be under the same false impression. I asked one girl the differences between young and middle-aged people in China, and was given a slightly ribald and detailed response centering on sex.

Afterwards, Mrs Boss, myself and one of her lackeys (supposedly HR manager) had a good laugh comparing the attractiveness of the various female translators in our company. If only Mrs Boss paid as much attention to her presentations as she did to her withering critiques of the physical features of her staff, we might actually get somewhere.