I have interviewed twice for MBL, the first time was for an internship. I did receive an offer, but declined in the end for a better offer. The second time was 2 years later for a full-time job position as Project Manager Assistant.
Both times I was interviewed by the same HR person. The first time around was not all too bad, except for when she asked me what my parents do for a living and started snickering when I told her that they own a restaurant, which was followed by some more completely unrelated questions in a very condescending tone. Apart from the spoken part, there was also a written test, which consisted of translating a short extract from Chinese into German and English.
The second time, I was called in for a last minute interview on the same day, as I was leaving Beijing the next day. I was asked to fill out a personal form, which included naming contacts to the government, media and business sector (slightly sketchy in my opinion).
The HR lady asked me to introduce myself and tell her about my previous working experience, which was mainly based on internships and freelance jobs. Then, she started to trash everything I said by snickering and evaluating previous working tasks as "easy". She even went so far as to question my German skills (German is my mother tongue, while she was a Chinese native), justifying this by saying that there are differences between natives, especially when it comes to their writing abilities. I do agree with her on that, but I have a background in liberal arts, translation and interpreting, so it is very safe to say that my German skills are perfectly adequate for a business environment. She then finally went on to actually test my German speaking and writing skills and shut up when she saw what she was dealing with.
The HR lady also told me that my Chinese would be unusable in a business environment, as it was only level B2 according to European standards in her humble opinion. Funny enough, I have had to use my Chinese skills while interning for the European Chamber of Commerce in Beijing, in completely Chinese offices at other companies and for translation work I did for Sino-European institutions. Also, I just took the HSK6, which is the equivalent to native speaker level and the only internationally recognized Chinese language certificate. She went on to trash and question my experience and skills some more, explaining that she was mainly worried about my lacking experience for the position (a requirement which had not been mentioned in the job description). At the same time, she started contradicting herself by praising me and told me I would fit well into the existing team. She also went on to tell me that "her colleagues" remembered me from 2 years ago and that my Chinese skills had improved tremendously and that I had lost weight and was hence prettier (highly unprofessional and rude, even for Chinese standards).
Apart from the single interview with the HR lady, there were no follow-up interviews with the actual Project Manager who I would be assisting. The final offer was a month as intern with the promise of signing a working contract afterwards. As I do not want to work for a company where my potential and worth are clearly not valued, I politely declined. I would hardly want to work there for money, not to mention for free.
