Help! Interview in another language advice???

I got along through some interview at a global AM firm. Most of their operations/investments are actually overseas primarly Asia and South America. I told them I am a novice speaker of spanish and italian in my initial conversations. I have another interview tomorrow but was told part of it would be in spanish. They said expect a mix of technical and behavioral questions already.

I've been practicing but there are so many words for technical I don't know in spanish. Also, I'm positive if it is a question that actually requires thinking in conjunction with technical info. I'm screwed.

8 Comments
 

How do you have it down on your resume/application. If under languages you just wrote Spanish and Italian then you probably deserve to be embarrassed. If you explicitly stated that you were a beginner you might be able to get out of it. When they told you your interview would be in spanish, why didn't you correct them and say that you were only a beginner and couldn't hold a conversation in another language? To be honest, unless I was fluent or very very good at a language, I would never proclaim any sort of language proficiency. Banks love to test people on their language skills and I've heard so many horror stories of people who have gotten "caught with their pants down" when it comes to knowing another language.

 
Best Response
bhollowaHow do you have it down on your resume/application. If under languages you just wrote Spanish and Italian then you probably deserve to be embarrassed. If you explicitly stated that you were a beginner you might be able to get out of it. When they told you your interview would be in spanish, why didn't you correct them and say that you were only a beginner and couldn't hold a conversation in another language? To be honest, unless I was fluent or very very good at a language, I would never proclaim any sort of language proficiency. Banks love to test people on their language skills and I've heard so many horror stories of people who have gotten "caught with their pants down" when it comes to knowing another language.

It said Spanish (Learning) & Italian (Learning)

Italian is my native language though.

They told me they get a lot of foreign professionals coming to their office and they travel abroad a lot. Hence I guess they want to test my fluency. I'm f*cked.

 

First of all its your mistake that you have written in your resume that you know Spanish language. If you don't know the language then talk to your interviewer and clear the misconception and apologize for your fault.

 
SirTradesaLotI guess you can try to fake a Catalan accent or something and pretend you don't understand their regional dialect. But, really, you are fucked.

That is funny but Catalan is actually a completely different language than Spanish much in the same way that Gaelic is a different language than English. The language commonly refereed to as" Spanish" is actually more properly called "Castilian" aka the Kingdom of Castle which was one of several kingdoms in Hispania before Spain was unified.

Too late for second-guessing Too late to go back to sleep.
 

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