Interviewing a candidate who speaks another language
Decide first whether the role genuinely requires fluency in your working language. If it does not, assess the skill in a language the candidate is strong in — otherwise you are measuring language ability and calling it competence.
The important question comes before any tooling decision: does this role actually require fluency in your working language?
For many roles the honest answer is no. Engineering, design, analysis and specialist operational work often require reading comprehension and written communication, not spoken fluency in a fast interview. If you assess in a language the candidate is weak in, you will measure their language ability and record it as competence.
Separate the two assessments
If the role does require spoken fluency, assess it deliberately and separately — a defined portion of the interview in that language, scored against a stated bar.
Then assess the actual skill in whatever language lets the candidate demonstrate it. Translated, or in their own language with someone who speaks it, or in writing.
Mixing the two produces a single confounded judgement, which is both unfair and a bad hiring signal.
Practical adjustments
- Send the format in advance: how long, who is on the panel, what will be discussed, in what language. Preparation disproportionately helps second-language candidates and costs you nothing.
- Share technical questions beforehand where the point is depth rather than surprise. You will learn more about how they think.
- Allow written answers for anything requiring precision.
- Slow down and drop idioms. Interview language is full of them — “walk me through”, “deep dive”, “red flag”.
- Repeat and rephrase questions rather than waiting through a silence that is comprehension rather than thought.
- Allow more silence. Composing an answer in a second language takes longer and says nothing about the answer’s quality.
Take-home work is worth more here
For a candidate assessed across a language barrier, a well-scoped take-home exercise or a portfolio review gives a far cleaner signal than a live interview. It removes real-time language processing from the measurement entirely.
Keep it short and pay for it if it is substantial.
Live translation, where it fits
Useful for the conversational parts — motivation, experience, working style — where the candidate has the most to say and the most to lose from limited fluency.
Less useful for technical deep-dives, where terminology density is high and translation error rates rise exactly where precision matters. For those, consider a panel member who shares their language, or a written component.
Practical notes: load a glossary of your technology and product names, and warn the candidate that translation will be running so the delay does not read as a failed connection.
Platform note
Candidates are external participants without your corporate licences. Teams Interpreter excludes external guests and anonymous users and requires Microsoft 365 Copilot — usually disqualifying for interviews. Google Meet handles one English-anchored language pair per meeting, 90-minute cap. Zoom gives translated captions only.
The fairness point
Whatever you choose, apply it consistently across candidates for the same role, and record what you did. An interview process that offers translation to some candidates and not others produces a comparison that is not a comparison — and, in several jurisdictions, a defensibility problem.