OPINION: Filipino job interviews can feel more like pageants than job assessments

Foreign clients often skip the theatrics and focus on skills, experience, and what applicants can actually do.

Some Filipino job interviews still sound like questions lifted from a Miss Universe pageant rather than an assessment of whether someone can actually do the work.

Candidates can be asked hypothetical questions such as, “If you were given one life jacket and had to choose between saving your mother or your wife, whom would you choose and why?” The answer may reveal how someone thinks under pressure, but it can also turn an interview into a test of confidence, charm, and quick improvisation.

The contrast is especially obvious when Filipino workers deal directly with foreign clients or companies.

Instead of asking candidates to solve moral dilemmas, some foreign clients can be much more straightforward. What is your internet speed? What equipment do you have? Do you have experience with the software we use? Can you show us what you have done before?

If the answers meet the requirements, the conversation can move quickly to the actual work.

One user on Threads recalled being interviewed first by a foreign CEO for the same position, describing the conversation as straightforward and productive.

“Then later I got another interview but with Filipino managers, panel setting. Guess what? The line of questioning of the foreigner was simple and direct. Whereas the Filipino ones were full of dramatized scenarios, redundant situations, pageant-like questions,” he said.

That approach does not mean every foreign employer has a better hiring process, nor are hypothetical questions automatically useless. Interviews still need to assess communication, judgment, and problem-solving.

But there is something outdated about making applicants perform like contestants when the job itself has concrete requirements.

A good hiring process should make it easier to identify whether someone can do the work, not reward whoever gives the most impressive answer to a question about saving their mother or wife.

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