polyglot
adjective
noun
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Mr. Vanlin shuffled the resume away. Another bust that would never be called. He sometimes wondered why it was so hard to find good employees these days. It was a wonder he had gotten two good candidates so far, but he had been hoping for more. At least his next interview seemed like it could be promising. The man, Jake Willow, had extensive computer skills, and claimed to know five languages besides English. That alone was a skill worthy of employment.
It took a few minutes for the interview to start, and when it did, Mr. Vanlin had to suppress a shudder. He had been hoping a linguist of Jake’s ability would be an impressive young man. Instead, he was a rotund fellow wearing thick glasses and a threadbare suit that did not quite fit.
“Hello, Mr. Willow, yes?” Mr. Vanlin started.
“Yup, that’s me.” Jake said, extending his hand. The handshake was moist and weak. Not something Mr. Vanlin wanted to deal with.
“Very good, please have a seat. Now then, let’s start things off, shall we? What do you know about the job you applied for?”
Once the interview started, Mr. Vanlin really saw just how unqualified Jake was. He was unprepared, barely even understanding what he had applied for, and knew nothing about the company. He gave ridiculous answers, very few of which made sense, and it looked like any movement at all caused his to sweat. And, as if to make things worse, all his computer “experience” was playing games, watching online videos, and writing terrible stories about already existing properties. There was no way Jake would be hired, polyglot or no. Mr. Vanlin was not even sure he wanted to know what languages the man spoke. But, he had to ask.
“Now, it says here you speak six languages. Is that correct?”
“Yup, sure is. Well, you know about English, right?”
“Yes, of course. What are the other five?”
“Elvish, Dwarvish, Klingon, Pig Latin, and Japanese.”
“I…see.” Mr. Vanlin said through clenched teeth. It was actually better than he thought. At least one of those was a real, functional language. Although, his level of fluency was another matter. “And you are fluent in all of them?”
“Oh yeah, definitely.”
“Including Japanese?”
“Especially Japanese. I spend, like, five hours a day watching subbed anime, so I’d say I know quite a bit of the language.”
Mr. Vanlin took a deep breath. It was worse than he thought. Did this man really think learning a language was so easy you could do it by watching cartoons? And the others were useless. Oh sure Pig Latin might be fun for kids, but in a professional setting? And the first three were fictional. How could anyone learn a language that did not actually exist?
“I see.” He ended up saying. “I think that’s about all the time we have for this interview.”
“Oh, yeah, sure, no problem. I bet you’ve got a bunch more interviews, right?”
“Yes, of course.”
“So, will I be hearing from you soon?”
“Well, that depends on the rest of the candidates. It will take about a month to sift through everyone, so you’ll know by then.”
“Cool, cool. You’ve got my number and all that, so I’ll definitely be waiting for that phone call. See you in a month.”
Jake got up and, without any further attempt at a polite departure, left the interview room. Mr. Vanlin would normally have taken some offence to that, but in this case, he was just glad the man was gone.
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Please don't be this person in a job interview. It's...it's not a good thing. Like, it's really bad. If you need help prepping for an interview, there's lots of resources online you can use to make a good impression and have a much better chance of landing a job.