One of my responsibilities with a former employer was to hire a new sales rep for a bilingual position (French/English) to serve our overseas clients.

I received many resumes written in both languages. Several of them included a note explaining that the potential candidate spoke a third language as well – usually Spanish or German.

The resume of one particularly promising candidate indicated that she was proficient in each of English, French and Spanish. So halfway through the interview, I suddenly switched to French. I asked her a question that would be simple for anyone with even a rudimentary understanding of the language to answer, but it was obvious from the look on her face that she hadn’t a clue what I was saying.

Sensing that she might not have been completely honest with me, I switched to Spanish. She was equally lost. To give her one last chance to redeem herself (and allow myself to blow off a little steam after having been misled for the better part of the morning), I asked her, in Spanish, if she was a liar.

When my question was once more met with a deer-in-the-headlights look and stunned silence, I switched back to English, gave her back her resume and asked her to leave.

Funny – this time, she seemed to get the message fast enough.