What questions can i expect to receive on a non profit job interview?

What are Indian interviewers (in the US) looking for in an interview?

• I'm finishing my degree in the US and have been interviewing for jobs. I had around 15 interviews so far. About half of them were conducted by Indian interviewers and the other half by a mixture of Asians, Middle-Easterners and White Americans. I passed more than 80% of the interviews with non-Indian interviewers but none from Indian interviewers.  Its funny that the race of the interviewer now becomes the single best predictor of the outcome of my interviews. It's not funny since I foresee many more encounters with Indian interviewers due to the type of job I am applying to (i.e. consulting and software development).  If I am lucky enough to land a job, I'm sure I will be working with plenty of them as well. While you can claim that Indians hold prejudice against other, especially non-white races (I'm East-Asian) in the hiring process, I don't think this is constructive (even if it might sadly be the truth, based on my Asian friends'  experience). Rather, I'd like to hypothesize that probably I don't understand the value system of the Indian people and therefore didn't exhibit enough good traits in the interview for them to pass me.  Here's some of my interview style/ background information that I think can be troublesome to Indian interviewers, based on my shallow understanding of their culture. I hope someone with similar experience (i.e. Indian people, Indian interviewers or those interviewed by Indian interviewers) would help me verify my concerns. Extra discussions or comments are more than welcome. 1. Proactive or submissive? I always actively communicate with the interviewers during interviews, with the belief that I can pass the interview if I manage to transfer the interview into a conversation from an interrogation.  I was praised by a few American interviewers for doing that. However, Somehow I got the impression that Indian interviewers instead expect you to show them a great deal of respect and submissively follow their own interview plan. Consequently, it seems that they frown upon traces (or overdoses of) of initiation, aggression, active engagement, different opinions or any act that treats them more like a peer/friend rather than a boss/supervisor. I know that hierarchy and rank exist in a variety of cultures so it's not always a bad thing, but I am too liberal to stick with those beliefs. Do people think the way I approach interviews are too aggressive for Indian interviewers based on their perhaps more peaceful cultural beliefs?  2. Language Issue? I speak English  with a light but sensible accent, but I can definitely communicate with anyone well. Meanwhile, I have noticed that people in my home country find Indian accent very hard to follow while apparently Indians have no problem communicating with any English-speaking person. Could the converse be true? Do Indian interviewers find East- Asian accent hard to follow (or sound funny/unprofessional) while I was totally unaware of it?  3. Evaluation Criteria I had an engineering degree which wouldn't typically place me into software development jobs, but I had a lot of coding experience in real-world settings and my programming skill should be on par with those with CS/EE degrees. Simply put,  I'm relatively weak on detailed CS knowledge (e.g. specific language features or terminologies in a particular subject area) but am relatively strong on logical thinking and problem solving. Non-Indian interviewers seem to be very flexible with my alternative background and even take that into account when they evaluate me. The Indian interviewers on the other hand grilled me with very detailed CS questions, laughed at my inability to answer them,  and started to judge my motivation for switching into the software industry. Is career-changing considered somewhat unprofessional/fishy by Indian people? Are they offended if someone from a different background is trying to take their job?  Do they tend to value knowledge more than the thinking process? 4. Being Late This is merely an observation: Indian interviewers arrive late by an average of 5 minutes and they never apologize for that. To make things even more bizarre, I once went to the bathroom in the middle of an interview after waiting for my Indian interviewer (being late) for about 3 minutes, thinking he wouldn't arrive very soon. I came back and had to wait for an additional 5 minutes before the interviewer came.  He later said something like "You went to the bathroom and wasted 5 minutes of my time, so I went to the bathroom and we wasted another 5 minutes of our time..."  Apparently, I was punished by going to the bathroom while he didn't show up on time. Is there any cultural reason for Indian interviewers to show up a bit late (it's so consistent, almost like an etiquette) and maybe test the patience of the interviewees?  I never pass those tests because every minute makes me more anxious.  These are just a few of my pre-mature thoughts. I'm definitely not (at least intentionally) biased against the Indian community. I have Indian friends in school and enjoyed interacting with them. It's still a mystery why I haven't had any success when being interviewed by those people. Could be just coincidence, but let's try to be more analytical.

• Answer:

  Your case makes me feel sad as an Indian, but as is the truth: 1. Proactive or submissive: What you may construe as proactive, may be judged as aggressive. Interview is a formal affair, due to colonial relic(blame the British) we incline towards formality. At interview, we are not there to make a friend of you. In fact we are not your friend. We are age conscious, class conscious and position conscious. You are welcome to challenge us but in a very, very, very deferential manner. 2. No accent problem: We have 18 official languages and thus 18 different ways of speaking English. We often indulge in making fun of each others accent but rarely judge them on that basis. We are impressed by the fluency, clarity and conciseness of the speech. We are not fond of free-flow consciousness in speech, as most of us have the habit of framing perfect English sentences before uttering them. 3. Evaluation criteria: We are degree conscious. Our order for software development is this: Computer Science>= Information Technology > Any other Engineering major>>> Bachelor of Science. In general, we prefer engineers for software development jobs. This is because studious kids in India, mostly target medical and engineering. If you are stumbling on typical data structures and algorithm questions then sorry to say they form the core part of Computer Science intensive jobs. If the interviewer made fun of your inability to answer question, then he is a horrible person, and not horrible Indian. 4. Being late: Again this varies from person to person, and being late is not a generalized Indian trait. I want to warn you that no interviewer is ever gonna tolerate tardiness. If you are late for interview, if we give you job, you will be late in doing work. Period.  On the other side, think seriously about working at a company where such sadist interviewers exist who try to punish potential interview candidates. * Try not to make stereotypical assessment about the interviewers. You will suffer if they are true, you will suffer more if they are false and you acted on what you thought was right. * I would love to know how many interviews did you give and how many of them were Indian interviewers, that you came up with magical percentage figures.