Back in May, I was approached by a recruiting company who thought I might be a good fit for a certain position. I went to an initial interview with the recruiting agency, they said that I am good to go to meet someone from the company.
The interview took place in Danish. Something important to know is that I speak Danish fluently (meaning I do cold calls in Danish, run qualification calls in Danish and have not experienced any problems with that). However, I am not a native speaker and I do have an accent.
So I went to this interview and I was asked 1-2 superficial questions (from the type of: 'why do you want this position?'). And after a few minutes in which I didn't even get to speak that much, she stated that my Danish was not good enough. The arguments were that 'our customers are finance people and they are very conservative'.
I personally see a couple of very problematic things here:
1. If they require a native speaker, that should be in the job ad - it wasn't.
2. This info should also be passed on to the headhunter who knew very well that I am not native.
3. My language level is also visible on my LinkedIn profile, which I doubt was even checked.
4. I don't know how she was even able to identify my level for such a short time. As I mentioned before I barely got to speak.
5. Most importantly, they are claiming to be about equality, diversity etc, but at the smallest 'inconvenience' they push back. And yes, I put inconvenience in inverted comas, because again I am capable of doing business in Danish and there is also record for that. But the worst thing is, she was not even willing to dig more into my specific skills for the position, my thoughts on it, etc.
I saw similar reviews before me and that's what inspired me to share my story, too. Because it appears to not be the only one.
